Area Array Packaging Handbook: Manufacturing and Assembly (Electronic Packaging and Interconnection) [Hardcover]

I particularly loves the the way the arthur organizes the content. Each packaging technology is covered in their own chapter. The chapter starts with an introduction and background, the materials and processes in the making of the packages, the applications and the limitations, the process, materials like solder pastes and fluxes and equipments needed to assemble these packages.

This book is design for both packaging house and Assembly house. It is also very useful for Failure Analysis guys as well as this book enables the reader to "see" the construction, and henceforth the possible weakness, of each of the packages.

All in all, this book is written for wide range of readers, from novice to R&D guys, this book covers it all.

The book brings together contributions from many of those disciplines by many talented contributors. The 38 authors include widely-known industry stars, such as Marie Cole, Dan Baldwin, Joe Fjelstad, Jennie Hwang, Wayne Johnson, Jan Vardaman, and Phil Zarrow, as well others equally expert in their own fields, if lesser known. Of course, the multi-talented Dr. Gilleo contributed several chapters, while editing the volume and riding herd on 37 cats.

The subjects covered begin with package concept and design and move through many of the intermediate stages of development and manufacture, to yields, costs, and markets. The 31 chapters are grouped into five major sections, following the flow from concept to markets.

Concepts and Design ranges in time from the pre-history of microelectronics (vacuum tubes) to the future history of packaging for current developments such as MEMS (microelectromechanical systems). After an industry overview and trends, chapters are devoted to each a wide variety of packaging, including arrays, stacked 3-dimensional, compliant ICs, and MEMS. Ken Gilleo gives a good overview of flip chip, and Marie Cole explains ceramic column grid arrays.

Materials addresses packaging ingredients. Coverage includes polymers, hermetic getters, the care and feeding of solder spheres, lead-free formulations (including their social and economic consequences), and conductive adhesives. Jennie Hwang's 59 page chapter on solder and solder paste is practically a book in itself.

Equipment and Processes is the largest section, with 11 chapters. It begins with Dan Baldwin detailing next-generation flip chip, and Wayne Johnson describing substrate design, assembly, underfills, and reliability. Rework includes chapters both for die attach rework and for BGA and CSP packages rework. Encapsulation, process development and control, and reliability have separate chapters, as do molding, screen printing and stenciling, high speed package mounting, and ovens.

Economics and Productivity begins with metrics: how to measure productivity, if any. The following chapter on cost estimating shows how to convert that productivity to profits. Both disciplines are overlooked in many texts and most companies.

Future considers the direction and destiny, both of electronic packaging and of packaging equipment, but not of the human race, and finds it pleasing. Convergences and their consequences on future packaging, and the expected evolution of SMT equipment, bring our forward-looking saga to a close.

The handbook format allows the experts to present their topics in free-standing chapters, as if they were consultants leaning over your shoulder. This format provides more practical detail than the broader but less specialized textbook format, at some sacrifice of the textbook's breadth and structure. These chapters vary in both the scope of the subject matter and in the depth of the presentation, ranging from 7 to 100 pages (mean = 24.06 pages, sigma =17.44 pages). The 400 illustrations (mean = 0.5 per page) make for easier understanding of the sometimes complex detail. Chapter-end references supply alternative sources for exploring further along these or tangential paths.

In summary, I recommend this book for gaining an understanding of the current state-of-the-art in these three packaging technologies, as an excellent reference for a wide variety of packaging topics, and as a valuable tool for solving present packaging problems and avoiding future ones.