In-line plasma cleaners: significant benefits for IC packaging performance

With the continuous development of microelectronics technology, processor chips run at ever higher frequencies, offer ever more functions and have ever more pins, while chip feature sizes keep shrinking and package sizes keep changing. To improve product performance, in-line plasma cleaners are gradually becoming widespread. So what does this equipment consist of, and how does it work on a production line?

In-line plasma cleaners offer low cost, ease of use, low maintenance cost and environmental friendliness. The substrate surface treatment is aimed mainly at IC packaging processes such as wire bonding and flip-chip packaging: flexible boards are automatically taken out of the magazine and plasma-cleaned to remove contamination from the material surface, with no human intervention.

Since this equipment is so effective, let us take a detailed look at the process flow of the in-line plasma cleaning system:

(A) 4 magazines filled with flexible boards are placed on the loading/unloading platform, and the pusher pushes the front strip out onto the loading/unloading conveyor system.

(B) The loading/unloading conveyor system carries the strip, via pinch rollers and belts, onto the upper stage of the material exchange platform, where it is positioned by the strip shifting system.

(C) The platform carrying the strip is moved under the plasma reaction chamber, and the system closes the vacuum chamber and pumps it down so that the strip can be plasma-cleaned. While the upper stage is at the cleaning position, the lower stage moves to the receiving position to receive the strip from the second layer. When cleaning on the upper stage is finished, the two stages swap positions: the strip on the lower stage is plasma-cleaned, while the upper stage moves to the receiving position to return its strip.

(D) The shifting system moves the strip on the material exchange platform onto the loading/unloading conveyor system, which carries it back into the magazine via pinch rollers and belts, completing one cycle. The pusher mechanism then pushes out the strip in the next layer for the next cycle.