Stackable system-on-packages with integrated components

In recent years, an increasing number of mobile electronic products such as mobile communicators, combining the functions of a mobile phone and a PDA are beginning to emerge. These devices are highly miniaturized and yet provide a variety of functions at ever higher speeds. Additionally, the product cycle time is getting faster, requiring short design and production cycles at ever lower cost. These trends are posing great set of challenges for the microelectronics and packaging and assembly industry. There seem to be two approaches to solve these challenges-system-in-package (SIP) by stacking of packaged integrated circuits (ICs) or system-on-package (SOP) by stacking of packages with embedded active and passive components. The buried components in SOP require significantly less space in the Z direction, thereby allowing the formation of three-dimensional (3-D) stackable packages. In this paper, two approaches for stacking SOPs were presented, the so-called chip-in-polymer (CIP) technology and duromer molded interconnect device (MID)/WLP technology.