• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.77-78
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• 2000

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.67-68
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• 2003

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.92-93
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• 2003

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.217-221
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• 2015

Developing a metallization that has low cost and high efficiency is essential in solar-cell industries, to replace expensive silver-based metallization. Ni/Cu two-step metallization is one way to reduce the cost of solar cells, because the price of copper is about 100 times less than that of silver. Alkaline electroless plating was used for depositing nickel seed layers on the front electrode area. Prior to the nickel deposition process, 2% HF solution was used to remove native oxide, which disturbs uniform nickel plating. In the subsequent step, a nickel sintering process was carried out in $N_2$ gas atmosphere; however, copper was plated by light-induced plating (LIP). Plated nickel has different properties under different bath conditions because nickel electroless plating is a completely chemical process. In this paper, plating bath conditions such as pH and temperature were varied, and the metal layer's structure was analyzed to investigate the adhesion of Ni/Cu metallization. Average adhesion values in the range of 0.2-0.49 N/mm were achieved for samples with no nickel sintering process.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.221-226
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• 2008

Silver coated copper composite powders were prepared by electroless plating method by controlling the activation and deposition process variables such as feeding rate of silver ions solution, concentration of reductant and molar ratio of activation solution $(NH_4OH/(NH_4)_2SO_4)$ at room temperature. The characteristics of the product were verified by using a scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic absorption (A.A.). It is noted that completely cleansing the copper oxide layers and protecting the copper particles surface from hydrolysis were important to obtain high quality Ag-Cu composite powders. The optimum conditions of Ag-Cu composite powder synthesis were $NH_4OH/(NH_4)_2SO_4$ molar ratio 4, concentration of reductant 15g/l and feeding rate of silver ions solution 2 ml/min.

• Clean Technology
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.103-109
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• 2011

The process optimization was carried out to improve the throwing power (TP) and the thickness uniformity of the electroless copper (Cu) plating, which plays a seed layer for the subsequent electroplating. The DOE (design of experiment) was employed to screen key factors out of all available operation parameters to influence the TP and thickness uniformity the most. It turned out that higher Cu ion concentration and lower plating temperature are advantageous to accomplish uniform via filling and they are accounted for based on the surface reactivity. To visualize what occurred experimentally and evaluate the phenomena qualitatively, the kinetic Monte Carlo (MC) simulation was introduced. The combination of neatly designed experiments by DOE and supporting theoretical simulation is believed to be inspiring in solving similar kinds of problems in the relevant field.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.170-176
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• 2017

EPIG (Electroless Pd/immersion Au) process was studied to replace ENIG (electroless Ni/immersion Au) and ENEPIG (electroless Ni/electroless Pd/immersion Au) processes for bump surface treatment used in high reliable flip chip packages. The palladium and gold layers formed by EPIG process were uniform with thickness of 125 nm and 34.5 nm, respectively. EPAG (Electroless Pd/autocatalytic Au) also produced even layers of palladium and gold with the thickness of 115 nm and 100 nm. TEM results exhibited that the gold layer in EPIG surface had crystalline structure while the palladium layer was amorphous one. After annealing at 250 nm, XPS analysis indicated that the palladium layer with thickness more than 22~33 nm could act as a diffusion barrier of copper interconnects. As a result of comparing the chip shear strength obtained from ENIG and EPIG surfaces, it was confirmed that the bonding strength was similar each other as 12.337 kg and 12.330 kg, respectively.

• International Journal of Quality Innovation
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.69-92
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• 2001

The laser-assisted seeding (LAS) process has potential to replace conventional electroless copper plating in Printed Circuit Board (PCB) manufacturing since it combines the steps of laser drilling and plating into one single process. In the LAS process, the single extra LAS step can metallize a microvia. Thus, the process steps can be greatly reduced and the productivity enhanced, but also the high aspect ratio microvias can be metallized. The objectives of this paper are to study the LAS copper thickness within PCB microvias and the thermal reliability of the microvias produced by this process. It was found that results were satisfactory in both the reliability test and also the LAS copper thickness which both comply with IPC standard, the copper thickness produced by the LAS process is sufficient for subsequent electro-plating process. The reliability of the microvias produced by LAS process is acceptable which are free from any voids, corner cracks, and distortion in the plated copper.

• Proceedings of the International Microelectronics And Packaging Society Conference
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• 2001.07a
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• pp.95-99
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• 2001

Cu is considered as a promising alternative interconnection material to Al-based interconnection materials in Si-based integrated circuits due to its low resistivity and superior resistance to the electromigration. New humping and UBM material systems for solder flip chip interconnection of Cu pads were investigated using electroless-plated copper (E-Cu) and electroless-plated nickel (E-Ni) plating methods as low cost alternatives. Optimally designed E-Ni/E-Cu UBM bilayer material system can be used not only as UBMs for solder bumps but also as bump itself. Electroless-plated E-Ni/E-Cu bumps assembled using anisotropic conductive adhesives on an organic substrate is successfully demonstrated and characterized in this study

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.714-719
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• 1996

For the fabrication of the circuits, contact or terminal areas are usually coated with nickel and gold. Usually, diluted palladium solution is applied to initiate electroless nickel plating on the copper circuits. However, the trace amounts of palladium remains on the resin and it causes the extraneous deposition. We confirmed that selectivity was greatly improved by the treatment with the strong reducing agents such as SBH or DMAB. Bondability was greatly influenced by the contents of phosphorus in the deposited nickel. Stabilizers in the electroless gold plating were also influenced the bonding strength. The baths containing cupferron or potassium nickel cyanide as a stabilizer showed superior bondability. The gold deposits having strong orientation with Au(220) and Au(311) showed good bond ability.