In the IC world, for example, aluminum conductor and SiO2 dielectric are being replaced with copper and low-dielectric constant polymer materials. The display technologies are focusing on such new technologies as field emission, and will advance and extend LCDs, plasma and CRT technologies. This vision requires a total of nine research areas that include electrical design, electrical test, ultra high density wiring, integral passives, optoelectronic integration, RF, thermal, flipchip assembly and large area intelligent manufacturing.
Advanced materials form the basis of PRC research in almost every one of the nine research areas.
All these are integrated into one component package called SLIM, a single level integrated module, schematically illustrated in the figure below. Professors Wong and Tummala are two faculty involved from Materials Science and Engineering. Their research groups have developed a number of materials and process inventions. In this no flow, compressive flip-chip interconnect process, this unique material is the key to the success of this technology. Second, the material must have the latency that doesn't react or polymerize until the solder joints melt, reflow and self-align.