Cleanliness demands for production environments of future miniature electronics

The main trend especially in telecommunication electronics is miniaturisation; the products will be smaller, lighter and still of high performance and low price. In addition to electronics components, such products include, among others, photonics, sensors, MEMS and are built on integrated, 3-dimensional multilayer substrates. In miniature devices the packaging aspects are emphasised: one has to :know new materials, components and interconnection methods. In addition, it is important to understand surface phenomena, the ways of producing dense integrated substrates and to master design and reliability aspects. The control of contamination in all stages of manufacturing processes becomes more and more important. The production of advanced miniature electronics is moving into clean rooms, because bare semiconductor chips are used, the packaging density is increased with smaller dimensions (< 50 mum) in conductor line widths and spaces, via diameters etc. In this presentation a short review is given on the trends in electronics production technologies together with the related cleanliness demands for production processes.