The present disclosure relates generally to ultrasound systems and, more specifically, to packaging structures and packaging methods for ultrasound-on-chip devices.
Ultrasound devices may be used to perform diagnostic imaging and/or treatment, using sound waves with frequencies that are higher than those audible to humans When pulses of ultrasound are transmitted into tissue, sound waves are reflected off the tissue with different tissues reflecting varying degrees of sound. These reflected sound waves may then be recorded and displayed as an ultrasound image to the operator. The strength (amplitude) of the sound signal and the time it takes for the wave to travel through the body provide information used to produce the ultrasound images.
Some ultrasound imaging devices may be fabricated using micromachined ultrasonic transducers, including a flexible membrane suspended above a substrate. A cavity is located between part of the substrate and the membrane, such that the combination of the substrate, cavity and membrane form a variable capacitor. When actuated by an appropriate electrical signal, the membrane generates an ultrasound signal by vibration. In response to receiving an ultrasound signal, the membrane is caused to vibrate and, as a result, generates an output electrical signal.
This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts that are further described below in the detailed description. This summary is not intended to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used as an aid in limiting the scope of the claimed subject matter.
In general, in one aspect, embodiments relate to a method of manufacturing an ultrasound imaging device, the method comprising: forming a multi-layer hybrid interposer structure, comprising: forming a plurality of first openings through a substrate, the substrate comprising a heat spreading material; forming a first metal material within the plurality of first openings and on top and bottom surfaces of the substrate; patterning the first metal material on the top and bottom surfaces of the substrate; forming a dielectric layer over the patterned first metal material on the top and bottom surfaces of the substrate; forming a plurality of second openings within the dielectric layer to expose portions of the patterned first metal material on the top and bottom surfaces of the substrate; filling the plurality of second openings with a second metal material, in contact with the exposed portions of the patterned first metal material; forming a third metal material on the top and bottom surfaces of the substrate, wherein the third metal material is in contact with the second metal material and the dielectric layer; and patterning the third metal material; and forming a packaging structure for an ultrasound-on-chip device, comprising: attaching a multi-layer flex substrate to a carrier wafer; bonding a first side of an ultrasound-on-chip device to the multi-layer flex substrate; bonding a second side of the ultrasound-on-chip device to a first side of the multi-layer hybrid interposer structure; and removing the carrier wafer.
Various aspects and embodiments of the application will be described with reference to the following figures. It should be appreciated that the figures are not necessarily drawn to scale. Items appearing in multiple figures are indicated by the same reference number in all the figures in which they appear.
The techniques described herein relate to packaging structures and packaging methods for ultrasound-on-chip devices.
One type of transducer suitable for use in ultrasound imaging devices is a micromachined ultrasonic transducer (MUT), which can be fabricated from, for example, silicon and configured to transmit and receive ultrasound energy. MUTs may include capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) and piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUTs), both of which can offer several advantages over more conventional transducer designs such as, for example, lower manufacturing costs and fabrication times and/or increased frequency bandwidth. With respect to the CMUT device, the basic structure is a parallel plate capacitor with a rigid bottom electrode and a top electrode residing on or within a flexible membrane. Thus, a cavity is defined between the bottom and top electrodes. In some designs (such as those produced by the assignee of the present application for example), a CMUT may be directly integrated on an integrated circuit that controls the operation of the transducer. One way of manufacturing a CMUT is to bond a membrane substrate to an integrated circuit substrate (e.g., such a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) substrate), at temperatures sufficiently low to prevent damage to the devices of the integrated circuit, thus defining an ultrasound-on-chip device.
In a portable ultrasound imaging device, (such as those produced by the assignee of the present application for example), an ultrasound-on-chip device may be packaged in a manner so as to provide heat dissipation from surfaces of the integrated circuit, as well as to provide one or more electrical signal paths between the ultrasound-on-chip device and other components of the portable ultrasound imaging device (e.g., field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), memory devices, and various other electronic components, etc.). To this end, one possible packaging arrangement may include an acoustic backing material (e.g., tungsten containing epoxy) disposed between the CMOS substrate and a metallic heat sink material (e.g., copper). An opposing side of the heat sink material may in turn be disposed on a printed circuit board (PCB) interposer. Electrical connection between the ultrasound-on-chip device and the PCB interposer may be facilitated through the use of individual wirebonds, a height of which may depend on a combined thickness of the individual ultrasound-on-chip, acoustic backing, and heat sink structures.
In some instances, a large number of such wirebonds having a relatively long bonding length due to this height may result in undesired parasitic inductance and resistance, which in turn can result in lower power efficiency and increased heating. Moreover, the use of a metallic material, such as copper, for a heat sinking device can result in a mismatch of the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) between the metal and the substrate material (e.g., silicon) of the CMOS. Accordingly, the inventors have recognized that certain alternative interposer/heat spreading materials may be helpful for bonding to the ultrasound-on-a-chip. Furthermore, such interposers may have a “hybrid” functionality by providing both heat spreading and signal routing functions, with the added benefit of better CTE matching to the CMOS substrate.
One example of such an alternative interposer structure is a ceramic substrate, such as for example aluminum nitride (AlN), that is further configured with though-via electrical conductors by, for example, using a direct plated copper (DPC) process that combines thin film and electrolytic plating processes. Here, the ceramic AlN material functions as a heat spreading material that better matches the CTE of silicon as compared to a metal heat sinking material such a copper. The interposer may lack sufficient mass to function as a heat sink, but rather may function as a heat spreader, distributing heat away from an ultrasound-on-chip device. In at least some embodiments, the interposer may exhibit sufficient stiffness to serve as a support for the ultrasound-on-chip device. In addition, this “hybrid” AlN interposer can directly communicate electrical signals between the ultrasound-on-chip device and the PCB interposer. Thus, where wirebonds are used to connect to the ultrasound-on-chip device, such wirebonds may be made shorter than those described above since the wirebonds need only extend from the ultrasound-on-chip device to the top of the AlN interposer, instead of all the way down to the top of the PCB. Alternatively, other connection structures may be utilized for electrically connecting the ultrasound-on-chip device to the hybrid AlN interposer, such as through-silicon vias (TSVs) formed in the ultrasound-on-a-chip.
As described, various aspects provide a hybrid interposer for connection to an ultrasound sensor chip or ultrasound-on-a-chip device. The hybrid interposer may possess a CTE substantially the same as that of silicon, which may be the material of a substrate of the ultrasound-on-chip-device. For example, the CTE of silicon is approximately 2.6 ppm/K. The CTE of the interposer material may be less than 5 ppm/K in at least some embodiments, including any value between 5 ppm/K and 2.5 ppm/K, as non-limiting examples. In some embodiments, the hybrid interposer has a CTE of approximately 4.5 ppm/K. The hybrid interposer may possess a stiffness sufficient to function as a support for the ultrasound-on-chip device and in at least some embodiments may be substantially rigid. Such structural stiffness may be particularly beneficial when the ultrasound-on-chip device is relatively thin and has a large surface area, such as being tens of microns thick, as a non-limiting example. In some embodiments, the thermal conductivity of the interposer may be between 150 W/m/K and 200 W/m/K, for example being approximately 170 W/m/K. Such thermal conductivities may facilitate the heat spreading function of the hybrid interposer. However, the hybrid interposer may lack sufficient mass to function as a heat sink maintaining the temperature of the device below some target temperature. Thus, in some embodiments, the hybrid interposer may be thermally coupled to a heat sink. Non-limiting examples of suitable hybrid interposer materials include AlN and SiN. The hybrid interposer may be thermally connected to a heat sink.
Additional information regarding hybrid ceramic interposers and TSV structures for ultrasound-on-a-chip devices may be found in application 62/623,948 (the '948 application), assigned to the assignee of the present application, the contents of which are incorporated herein in their entirety. Additional information regarding hybrid ceramic interposers and TSV structures for ultrasound-on-a-chip devices may also be found in co-pending application Ser. No. 16/260,242 (the '242 application), assigned to the assignee of the present application, and published as U.S. Pat. Pub. 2019/0231312 A1, the contents of which are incorporated herein in their entirety.
The inventors have recognized that it may be further advantageous to combine the functions of both a hybrid ceramic interposer and a PCB into a single integrated substrate, which is also subsequently referred to herein as a multilayer DPC or MLDPC substrate. As will also be described herein, the MLDPC substrate may be used as part of one or more packaging structure embodiments for an ultrasound-on-chip device.
Referring generally now to
As indicated in block 104 of
Proceeding now to block 108 of
Referring again to
Depending on a desired application for a hybrid interposer structure, one or more additional processing operations may also be performed, such as patterning the dielectric layer 208 on one or both sides of the substrate 200 to configure a particular geometry. For example,
As indicated above, however, it is contemplated that other metal layer patterns may be used depending on the desired heat spreading and signal redistribution capabilities of the structure. By way of an additional example,
Turning now to
As indicated above, other ultrasound-on-chip packaging approaches may be used as an alternative to InFO packaging, either alone or in combination with interposer substrates. Referring now to
The process flow 800 commences at block 802 of
The resulting chip/flex substrate assembly may then be bonded to a ceramic hybrid substrate 908 (e.g., AlN DPC) as indicated in block 806 of
Referring again to
It will readily be appreciated that, in addition to the embodiments described above (e.g., an InFO chip mounted on the MLDPC substrate, and a flex-packaged chip mounted on a DPC interposer/PCB assembly), a combination of the two approaches is also possible. For instance, the MLDPC fabrication approach illustrated in
The above-described embodiments can be implemented in any of numerous ways. For example, the embodiments may be implemented using hardware, software or a combination thereof. When implemented in software, the software code can be executed on any suitable processor (e.g., a microprocessor) or collection of processors, whether provided in a single computing device or distributed among multiple computing devices. It should be appreciated that any component or collection of components that perform the functions described above can be generically considered as one or more controllers that control the above-discussed functions. The one or more controllers can be implemented in numerous ways, such as with dedicated hardware, or with general purpose hardware (e.g., one or more processors) that is programmed using microcode or software to perform the functions recited above.
Various aspects of the present invention may be used alone, in combination, or in a variety of arrangements not specifically discussed in the embodiments described in the foregoing and is therefore not limited in its application to the details and arrangement of components set forth in the foregoing description or illustrated in the drawings. For example, aspects described in one embodiment may be combined in any manner with aspects described in other embodiments.
Also, some aspects of the technology may be embodied as a method, of which an example has been provided. The acts performed as part of the method may be ordered in any suitable way. Accordingly, embodiments may be constructed in which acts are performed in an order different than illustrated, which may include performing some acts simultaneously, even though shown as sequential acts in illustrative embodiments.
Use of ordinal terms such as “first,” “second,” “third,” etc., in the claims to modify a claim element does not by itself connote any priority, precedence, or order of one claim element over another or the temporal order in which acts of a method are performed, but are used merely as labels to distinguish one claim element having a certain name from another element having a same name (but for use of the ordinal term) to distinguish the claim elements.
Also, the phraseology and terminology used herein is for the purpose of description and should not be regarded as limiting. The use of “including,” “comprising,” or “having,” “containing,” “involving,” and variations thereof herein, is meant to encompass the items listed thereafter and equivalents thereof as well as additional items.
In the claims, as well as in the specification above, all transitional phrases such as “comprising,” “including,” “carrying,” “having,” “containing,” “involving,” “holding,” “composed of,” and the like are to be understood to be open-ended, i.e., to mean including but not limited to. Only the transitional phrases “consisting of” and “consisting essentially of” shall be closed or semi-closed transitional phrases, respectively.
This application is a continuation of and claims the benefit of priority under 35 U.S.C. § 120 to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/774,956, filed Jan. 28, 2020, which claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. § 119(e) of U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 62/798,446, filed Jan. 29, 2019 under Attorney Docket No. B1348.70130US00, and entitled “PACKAGING STRUCTURES AND PACKAGING METHODS FOR ULTRASOUND-ON-CHIP DEVICES,” which are hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
62798446 | Jan 2019 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
Parent | 16774956 | Jan 2020 | US |
Child | 17962408 | US |