Temporary bonding equipment market will see 5x growth in value 2011-2016

DUBLIN, IRELAND: Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Thin Wafer Manufacturing Equipment & Materials Markets" report to its offering.

Why thin wafers will require special handling processes and technologies
Many consumer applications will require the need for ultra-thin semiconductor wafers (down to 50m). But as wafer thickness decreases from the traditional 500m to 100m and below, manufacturing challenges arise. Indeed, ultra-thin wafers are less stable and more vulnerable to stresses, and die can be prone to breaking and warping not only during grinding but also at subsequent processing steps.

To address these challenges, as chip thickness is reduced, new processes including temporary bonding technologies will be required for handling such fragile wafers, specifically to support the wafer during backgrinding and subsequent post-thinning processes.

As tapes can no longer be used for ultra-thin wafers (main reasons are the non-uniformity of the tapes, adhesion and extreme flexibility), new wafer handling technologies have to be developed. We are at the very start of an impressive market growth for temporary bonding technology.

The Thin Wafer Manufacturing Equipment & Materials Market report is the first Yole report to describe the markets, applications and technologies for thin wafer manufacturing: our scope covers temporary bonding markets, applications, descriptions and trends for wafer thinning and dicing. This report also includes a market analysis on temporary bonding materials (wax, glue, tapes, carrier wafers) associated with the temporary bonding technology.

Temporary bonding market will undergo 5X market growth over 2011-16
Temporary bonding is definitively a multiple-applications market. This is why the market is expected to boom. We estimate the total number of wafers requiring temporary wafer bonding will be more than 35M by 2016 (all wafer sizes).

Main applications driving temporary bonding are Advanced Packaging applications (TSV, interposers and Fan Out WLP), Power Devices (IGBTs), RF Devices and LEDs.

By 2016, we evaluate the wafer temporary bonding (WTB) market equipment value for wafer and panels to be $300 million by 2016.