Shaping the next decade of advanced packaging innovation

As advanced packaging evolves to meet the demands of AI and high-performance computing, manufacturers face growing challenges around yield, precision, throughput and process stability. Mycronic outlines how its portfolio of testing, surface preparation, die bonding and photonic integration technologies is helping bridge the gap between emerging packaging architectures and high-volume production.

By Laura Horan, Gilles Lambinet, Ove Sörensen, Irving Wang, Per-Erik Gustafsson, mycronic

The demand for advanced packaging, driven by AI and computing megatrends, is pushing manufacturing into a new phase of complexity and scale. This demand can no longer be satisfied through silicon design alone, and the industry is responding with novel manufacturing technologies such as chiplets, heterogeneous integration, 2.5D and 3D packaging, as well as the integration of silicon photonics and co-packaged optics (CPO).

Advanced packaging architectures are critical to enable the enhanced levels of performance required by the megatrends, but they also introduce significant manufacturing challenges. The pace of innovation has also accelerated significantly. Development cycles are shortening and new technology generations are transitioning into production faster than before. This leaves manufacturers less time to develop, validate and industrialize new processes, materials and integration strategies, increasing the need for flexibility and rapid innovation validation.

Volume production, yield optimization, testing, and the integration of multiple dies rapidly drive-up manufacturing complexity. System performance is increasingly determined by how diverse technologies are integrated within a single package, and each technology may require vastly different manufacturing processes. Success now depends on achieving technical breakthroughs while also delivering high process stability, yield, throughput, and quality as production scales.

Mycronic has long recognised these challenges and has assembled a value chain of companies dedicated to solving the manufacturing challenges of the next decade. Mycronic’s strategic acquisitions in the photonics and advanced packaging space offer customers a broad value proposition and technologies across multiple critical stages of the manufacturing flow, from testing and surface preparation to advanced assembly and photonic integration.

Hprobe ensures that only known-good magnetic devices enter advanced packaging flows
One of the key requirements for advanced packaging is to ensure that only fully functional devices enter the packaging flow. As device complexity and packaging costs increase, identifying performance issues early in the manufacturing process becomes essential. For magnetic devices such as Magnetoresistive Random-Access Memory (MRAM) and magnetic sensors (e.g. Hall, AMR, GMR, TMR), this requires testing both at wafer level and after packaging to verify device functionality, process stability and final product performance.

Unlike conventional semiconductor devices, MRAM and magnetic sensors must be characterized under precisely controlled magnetic field conditions. Their performance depends not only on electrical parameters but also on their response to magnetic field amplitude and orientation, making dedicated magnetic test equipment essential to manufacturing.

Hprobe, a Mycronic company, develops automated magnetic test equipment dedicated to magnetic semiconductor devices, see Figure 1. Its patented three-dimensional magnetic field technology enables vectorial magnetic field generation above 200 mT in any direction, reaching over 500 mT in-plane and more than 250 mT out-of-plane across a large, highly uniform test area. Combined with magnetic field sweep rates up to 2 T/s, precise field calibration, and seamless integration with industry-standard wafer probers and automated test equipment (ATE), the platform supports both development and high-volume manufacturing on 200 mm and 300 mm wafers.

Figure 1: Inside the Hprobe Test Head: Magnetic Field Generation and Wafer-Level Probing b) Hprobe ATE integrated with TEL Precio XL wafer prober.

Wafer-level magnetic testing enables manufacturers to characterize devices early in production to identify process variations, monitor production quality, and screen known-good devices before costly packaging operations take place. Early magnetic testing reduces manufacturing risk while accelerating process development and yield optimization.

In advanced packaging, the packaged devices must also be validated under controlled magnetic field conditions before deployment. Advanced sensing devices benefit from adjustment of the magnetic sensitivity after packaging using a magnetic tester. Hprobe’s packaged-device test solution combines precise three-dimensional magnetic field control with full 360° capability, automated calibration, and field mapping at the device-under-test (DUT) position to ensure accurate, repeatable measurements.

Figure 2: a) More –than-Moore 3D Stacked Chip Design using Surfx plasma as a key enabling technology b) Surfx plasma head and the plasma glow in purple c) Surfx turn-key semiconductor equipment with Atomflo™ plasma technology

The system operates from -40°C to +150°C using CDA cooling and can be used with external ATE. This integration enables parallel testing of multiple devices under controlled magnetic fields. The complete test process is software driven, allowing users to define 3D magnetic field patterns, align the device and execute semi-automatic test sequences from a single programming environment.

Hprobe helps semiconductor manufacturers ensure consistent magnetic device performance throughout production, complementing Mycronic’s broader portfolio of advanced packaging and manufacturing solutions.

Figure 3. Overnight stability test of a one-micron die bonder

Surfx tackles the yield challenge by maintaining surface quality
Every advance in AI computing requires one simple yet non-negotiable requirement, the chips must work. As interconnect pitches shrink and bond lines thin, the margin for error keeps closing. Often the condition of the chip surface determines the difference between a high-yield or struggling production line.

At Surfx, a Mycronic company, we focus on this challenge. Nearly every bonding and coating step in advanced packaging depends on starting from a clean, chemically ready surface. Traditional approaches based on wet chemistry or vacuum plasma add cycle time, queue time, and additional production line complexity. With AI demand compressing manufacturing timelines, the industry requires another solution.

Our answer is the Atomflo™ atmospheric plasma platform, shown in Figure 2. Unlike vacuum based systems, Atomflo™ operates without a vacuum chamber, without ion bombardment, and without disrupting the flow of production. It activates surfaces in seconds, right at the point of use, inside the tool rather than beside it. The technology generates a dramatically higher concentration of reactive radicals while eliminating ion bombardment and maintaining an essentially particle-free process. For 300 mm wafers and emerging larger panel formats, substrates can be treated in-line, at production speed, eliminating the cycle time bottleneck of batch vacuum systems.

As semiconductor manufacturers move toward hybrid bonding, flux-less thermocompression bonding (TCB), and other advanced interconnect technologies, process sensitivity has increased significantly. These applications demand surface preparation methods that are both effective and gentle. Unlike many conventional atmospheric plasma systems, Atomflo™ produces no electrostatic discharge (ESD) and avoids energetic ion bombardment that can damage sensitive structures. This combined with high surface activation, makes it particularly well suited for advanced logic and memory devices powering the AI revolution.

Surfx plasma technology has become a key enabler for next-generation packaging architectures aligned with the More-than-Moore roadmap, supporting advanced 3D integration strategies that push performance beyond traditional semiconductor scaling. Today, Surfx proudly serves leading global logic and memory manufacturers, including companies driving AI, with solutions tailored to the fastest-growing advanced packaging applications.

It’s a small, precise intervention that lets manufacturers hold yield steady while chip architecture evolves toward smaller pitches. Surfx’s contribution to advanced packaging is the proof that sometimes the biggest unlock is controlling the surface nobody sees.

Integrating optoelectronics using die bonding for packaging at scale with MRSI
The rapid evolution of AI architectures, driven by growing bandwidth demands, is accelerating the adoption of co-packaged optics (CPO) and near-packaged optics (NPO). The industry is increasingly assembling systems where multiple optical and electronic components are combined within a common package. This trend is driving new requirements for assembly precision, throughput, and manufacturing stability.

For more than 40 years, MRSI, a Mycronic company, has provided precision die bonding equipment for optoelectronic and microelectronic packaging. Its systems are built to support well-established processes, including eutectic and epoxy die attach on singulated substrates and wafers, delivering placement accuracy as tight as one micron. This combination of accuracy, process flexibility, and production capability positions MRSI to support both conventional pluggable transceivers and emerging, highly integrated photonic assemblies.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the scale and architecture of data center networking. AI training and inference require large numbers of accelerators to exchange data continuously across scale-up and scale-out networks, making high-bandwidth, high-reliability optical interconnects critical to overall computing performance.

NVIDIA describes optical interconnects as the critical backbone for scaling AI clusters and offers products for infrastructure operating at speeds of up to 1.6T.

In novel CPO and NPO architectures, photonic ICs, electrical ICs, interposers, and micro-optical components are packaged into highly integrated optical engines using advanced processes, including wafer- and panel-level packaging. MRSI addresses these requirements through a portfolio of high-accuracy, flexible die bonding solutions. The die bonding systems have placement accuracy down to 0.5 micron, with proven long term process stability required for 24/7 high-volume manufacturing (see Figure 3). MRSI enables manufacturers to scale production to new generations of products. As optical connectivity moves closer to the compute engine, precision die bonding is becoming an essential manufacturing capability for the next generation of AI infrastructure.

Vanguard Automation unlocks scalable photonic integration using 3D nano-printing
One of the critical challenges to advanced packaging is photonic integration, a key process for manufacturing electro-optical engines that underpin transceivers, CPO, light engines, and external light sources (ELSFP). Integrating active components such as lasers with passive photonic integrated circuits (PICs) typically requires highly precise, time consuming, active alignment processes that can be difficult to scale across multiple optical channels without compromising loss budgets or product reliability.

Figure 4: a) vanguard SYMPHONY fully automated photonic integration and packaging platform. b) SEM image of a single-mode fibre (SMF) array integrated to an AMF chip using Photonic Wire Bonds (PWBs).

Vanguard Automation, a Mycronic company, has developed 3D nano-printing technology that enables scalable photonic integration while utilizing passive alignment processes. The solution uses highly precise direct-write 3D laser lithography to fabricate 3D freeform optical interconnects directly onto photonic devices at chip and wafer level. The optical interconnects compensate for process misalignments, while maintaining high optical performance, allowing manufacturers to integrate active components with PICs at low cost.

“Photonic integration remains one of the most significant barriers to high-volume production. By replacing complex active alignment processes with passive alignment solutions enabled by 3D nano-printing, we are helping customers achieve yield and manufacturing throughput required for next-generation optical systems.” Dr. Laura Horan, Head of Product Management, Vanguard Automation.

Vanguard offers a complete portfolio of optical interconnects, including Photonic Wire Bonds (PWBs) and facet-attached micro-lenses (FaMLs), to support scalable photonic integration across a wide range of packaging scenarios.

PWBs are freeform optical waveguides fabricated between photonic components to compensate placement misalignments of up to ±20 µm while maintaining efficient coupling by modefield matching. PWBs are increasingly recognised as the preferred solution for hybrid integration of III-V lasers with PIC platforms. In recent demonstrations, PWBs achieved insertion losses lower than 1 dB per interface and supported stable laser operation.

FaMLs perform spot-size conversion and beam shaping, relaxing mechanical alignment tolerances to ±15 µm, and reducing sensitivity to lateral and angular misalignment. This eliminates the need for bulk optics, reducing system footprint and packaging complexity.

The fully automated vanguard SYMPHONY platform (SONATA1000 and REPRISE1000), as seen in Figure 4, combines machine-vision systems, post-processing, industrial-grade materials (VanCore series) and software (BrightWire3D) to support reliable photonic integration. The result is a software-defined manufacturing process that transitions seamlessly from prototyping to volume production without product-specific tooling. The resulting optical interconnects are compatible with standard manufacturing processes and withstand solder reflow temperatures, mechanical shock, vibration, and extended environmental stress testing, demonstrating the reliability for manufacturing deployment.

Mycronic group shaping the advanced packaging value chain
The advanced packaging industry is currently discussed as individual technologies, yet the real challenge is integrating all of them into a stable, repeatable, high-yield manufacturing chain. The manufacturing sequence for a typical advanced package clearly illustrates this challenge, from testing to surface preparation, electronic integration and photonic packaging, and failure at any stage can significantly impact manufacturing yield.

Mycronic’s solutions portfolio addresses multiple stages of the advanced packaging flow through complementary capabilities. These capabilities complement Mycronic’s broader portfolio in semiconductor and electronics manufacturing, including photomask equipment, PCB and substrate assembly and test, and high volume assembly and dispensing technologies. Customers increasingly seek partners capable of supporting them throughout the complete product and process lifecycle.

“We have the ability to work closely with customers in early development, while also having the capability to deliver advanced production systems at scale, with high delivery precision and stable yield in the field,” says Per-Erik Gustafsson, Head of Group Business Control & Corporate Planning, Mycronic. “That combination is becoming increasingly critical, as customers need speed, flexibility, yield and reliability at the same time.”

This requires tight collaboration, strong process understanding, and the ability to transition from development to stable production with short lead times.

“At the same time, flexibility remains critical. Customers need to adapt quickly to new architectures, materials and processes without compromising production. The ability to bridge emerging technologies into stable, high-volume manufacturing will become increasingly important, and Mycronic is well positioned to support that transition.”

Ultimately, long-term success in advanced packaging will not be determined by technology trends alone. Successful execution on the factory floor, where precision, stability, yield, and throughput define what can be manufactured at scale, will be equally important. Mycronic is looking to the future to remain ahead of the latest packaging needs and has positioned itself as a company at the convergence of the most critical manufacturing technologies enabling advanced packaging for the future megatrends.