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A semi-automated packaging process for transducer array manufacturing is presented. As an major innovation, a transducer disc is integrated in a sandwich structure between a printed circuit board (PCB) and an acoustic matching layer. Each of the transducer discs contains 18 lead-zirconium-titanate (PZT) fibres embedded in epoxy. To interconnect the transducer array components, adhesive bonding and automatic pick-and-place processes were used. A pre-series was evaluated by measuring the electro-mechanical impedance (EMI) before and after the assembly. Statistical analysis showed consistent behaviour of the series resonance f s and the electro-mechanical coupling k eff before and after the packaging. This encouraged the manufacturing of 256 arrays. These arrays will now be integrated in an ultrasound computer tomography (USCT) system with 3D scanning aperture for breast cancer imaging. With this system, we intend to bridge the gap towards clinical use of full 3D USCT.

The Compressed Baryonic Matter Experiment (CBM) investigates highly compressed nuclear matter, utilizing a Silicon Tracking System comprising 896 silicon sensors modules packed in eight layers with an overall area of four sqm. Each module consists of one sensor, 16 Read-Out Chips and 16 double-layer micro flex-cables, which are connected to the top and bottom side of the sensor. The cables are up to 50 cm long. They carry 128 signal traces on two layers at a pitch of 100 μm and a line-width of 25 μm. The layers are separated by a meshed core to reduce the cable capacity to 0.44 pF/cm. The cables are bonded onto one sensor by a pick and place flip-chip machine. The interconnection is realized by gold stud-bumps on the silicon and SAC solder bumps on the cable. The status of the sensor module and cable production process are presented.

A novel 1200 V and 110 A SiC pin-fin direct cooled six-pack power module with integrated DC-link capacitor and gate driver circuits is presented. The SiC power devices are sintered on a DCB-thick-film combined substrate using a novel copper sinter paste. The copper sintered connection has a shear strength of 73.2 MPa which is comparable to the shear strength of Ag-sintering. The module has a thermal resistance between chip and coolant of 1.4 K/W. By integrating the DC-link capacitor into the module, the parasitic stray inductance of the commutation loop can be reduced by 3x times to the value of 7.2 nH. The parasitic inductances in the high side and low side gate loop have a value of 3.4 nH.

Low-temperature low-pressure silver sintering is a die attachment process for highly reliable power modules. The quality of the sintered interconnection strongly depends on the properties of substrate metal, the die metallization and the sinter paste. This paper investigates the properties of chips sintered at 10 MPa and 250 °C on recently proposed gold layers, which are electrochemically deposited on nickel, palladium and silver layers in a mixed displacement and autocatalytic reaction. This specific deposition process leads to ENIG, EPIG ENEPIG and ISIG finishes comprising a gold layer of high purity, which was proven utilizing X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and FIB-SEM sections. Shear tests demonstrated the high quality of the sintered interconnection. Shear values at room temperature exceeded 80 N/mm2. After storing the substrate for two hours at 200 °C or for one hour at 350 °C prior to the sintering process shear values over 80 N/mm2 were measured. Gold layers deposited by this new process are very suitable for silver sintering processes and tolerant to various sinter pastes from different manufactures. Shear values derived from a paste of a different vendor exceeded 180 N/mm2, resulting in copper torn out of the DCB.

Silver sintering is a potential die attach technology to replace the solder technology for power electronic systems. A design of experiments (DoE) is performed in order to investigate the influences of sinter parameters as sinter pressure, temperature, duration, drying temperature and the interactions of these parameters on the shear strength of the Ag-sinter connection. Four sinter pastes have been evaluated. All significant parameters and parameter interactions are identified in order to derive a quadratic model function used to fit the measured shear values. This fitted function predicts the shear strength as a function of the significant parameters and, moreover, the function is used to determine the optimal sinter parameter space. The shear tests reveal that for three tested sinter pastes an excellent average shear result exceeding 90 MPa is achieved. One sinter paste outperforms these results by an average shear strength of 121 MPa. The DoE shows that all sinter pastes are significantly dependent on the sinter pressure and sinter temperature. However one sinter paste is influenced by the drying temperature and a second sinter paste is independent of the drying temperature as well as the sinter duration.