Wilmington, MA -(BUSINESS WIRE)-September 4, 2024 -Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE: ONTO) announced the opening of the company’s Packaging Applications Center of Excellence (PACE), a first-of-its-kind facility in the U.S. dedicated to panel-level packaging (PLP) innovations enabling 2.5D and 3D chiplet architectures and AI packages. Collaborating partners represent key process steps across the supply chain, ranging from panel package and IC substrate manufacturers to process equipment and material suppliers. Collaborators include: ASMPT, Corning, Evatec, Lam Research, LPKF Laser & Electronics SE, MKS Instruments, Resonac Corporation, Taiyo Ink Mfg. Co., Ltd., and multiple others.

At PACE, Onto and its collaborators will use their expert knowledge of lithography, plating, thin film deposition, laser processes for through glass via (TGV) formation, and new material developments in photoresist, dielectric and plating chemistry to work toward sub-1.5µm line/space panel interconnects. In addition, PACE participants will explore novel organic damascene process innovations for maintaining proper interconnect line widths, a critical requirement as the line/space feature size shrinks, in an effort to replace the conventional semi-additive process for advanced IC substrates.

To ensure yields for these increasingly fine interconnects, the PACE collaboration team will also focus on process control technologies like Onto’s Firefly^® G3 system. With glass core substrates being the next technology inflection, the Firefly G3 system is designed to address new inspection and metrology challenges associated with transparent panels, such as detecting missing TGVs and performing TGV critical dimension measurements across the entire panel.

“With the need for finer, denser interconnects and larger package sizes to support new AI and chiplet architectures, customers and collaborators need to accelerate their technology roadmaps and shorten the time to market,” says Mike Plisinski, chief executive officer of Onto Innovation. “Together, we will develop new panel-level packaging solutions in support of glass core substrates and the rapidly evolving AI landscape.”

Located at Onto’s Wilmington, Massachusetts, headquarters, PACE offers collaborators and customers access to Onto’s JetStep^® X500 glass panel handling lithography system, next generation lens technology for glass substrates capable of sub-1.5µm line/space imaging with shot sizes of 141mm x 141mm, and the Discover^® Command Center featuring robust data analytics, process controls and AI-enabled services integrating Onto tools and third party solutions. In addition, PACE offers secure data access, an essential need for preserving the confidentiality of partners’ datasets.

“Onto’s data platform enables partners and customers to only see data relevant to them while offering a complete view of process insights via dashboards and interactive applications,” says Danielle Baptiste, vice president and general manager of Onto’s enterprise software business.

“For Onto Innovation, PACE provides the Company the opportunity to unite the leading innovators across IC substrate and panel-level packaging manufacturing, process equipment and materials in order to solve complex challenges posed by the adoption of stable glass substrates for the next generation of compute architectures,” concludes Mr. Plisinski. “Working collaboratively with our partners and potential customers, we intend to accelerate these roadmaps and the benefits higher performance and lower power consumption devices will have on society.”