Future Developments

Abstract

The future of electronics is quality in addition to continued innovations. The emergence of more complex and densely integrated circuits demand materials, technologies, and processes capable of relating them to the outside world. This creates motivation to the development of subsequent packaging and interconnections. Surface mount technology for which Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction has been, and will continue to play, a major role for the second level interconnections. The utilization of surface mount technology has been growing, and its benefits have been evidenced in a variety of manufacturing facilities. Figure 12.1 depicts the manufacturing process at the Lexington, Kentucky facility of IBM Corporation using surface mount technology to manufacture printed circuit boards for its printers and typewriters, and Figure 12-2 is an eight-Megabyte memory board which is a double-sided surface mount board manufactured by Xetel Corporation in Austin, Texas.