Kulicke and Soffa Industries, Inc. in collaboration with ROHM Co., Ltd. announced a new path to hybrid bonding leveraging Kulicke & Soffa's leading Fluxless Thermo-Compression process. Kulicke & Soffa's recently released APTURA FTC system, combined with technology innovations from ROHM, have successfully enhanced chip-to-wafer hybrid bonding with the innovative copper-first CuFirst hybrid solution. While existing die-to-wafer hybrid bonding capacity can enable significant I/O density yield challenges, cost of ownership, and front-end processing requirements are limiting the adoption rate and market potential of existing hybrid solutions.

The CuFirst hybrid solution, utilizing the K&S APTURA FTC platform, addresses these production limitations and challenges. With the emerging CuFirst process, the copper interconnect is bonded first ? leveraging the APTURA platform's FTC capability ?

then the dielectric connection is made once the device returns to room temperature. This CuFirst process is expected to support higher yields, lower infrastructure costs and better cost of ownership compared to conventional die-to-wafer hybrid bonding. In addition to CuFirst hybrid, the APTURA FTC system also supports traditional flux- and fluxless-based thermo-compression bonding, including the direct bonding of copper-to-copper pillars ?

down to an 8µm pitch. This system can also accommodate die-to-die, die-to-substrate, or die-to-wafer configurations comprehensively addressing a broad range of material handling and end-application requirements. The Company expects its leadership in FTC to further extend as the need for more complex assembly solutions continue to grow.

During fiscal year 2025, K&S anticipates its TCB business will increase by 40-50% sequentially, driven by broadening adoption in leading-edge compute, optical, communications and industrial markets.