Cost-of-Ownership Comparison of Single-Wafer Processes for Stripping Copper Pillar Bump Photomasks

A new generation of negative tone and chemically amplified positive tone photoresists by TOK, JSR, Dow Chemical and others has gained momentum for advanced packaging applications. Resist thickness requirements are increasing to the 40-100 μm range as Cu pillars and micro-bumps are adopted, to accommodate the tighter pitches required in the newest multi-chip package designs. In order to form the pillars, the resist mask must be thicker than the height of the pillars to contain the entire bump structure.