Aug 15, 2013
Heller Industries announced today that they have entered into a joint development agreement with International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM), to collaborate on the development of fluxless mass reflow furnace equipment and process for high volume manufacturing. The fluxless process utilizes gas phase formic acid to replace standard fluxing agents, and eliminates the need for pre-reflow fluxing and post-reflow flux cleanup steps.
Heller Industries and IBM Microelectronics will jointly develop the optimum materials, equipment, process parameters, monitoring systems and thermal profiles required to implement the fluxless mass reflow tooling and process in a high volume manufacturing environment.
“Advanced semiconductor device packaging presents the industry with significant challenges due to reduced bump size and increased I/O density.” said David Heller, CEO of Heller Industries. “The gaseous fluxing process may become instrumental in helping our customers develop their next generation chip packaging technologies. In entering this agreement Heller and IBM will take advantage of Heller’s thermal management and equipment development expertise and IBM’s wide range of experience, technology and process knowledge for advanced component packaging.”
The joint Heller & IBM team will implement the program at the Heller Industries corporate headquarters in Florham Park NJ, IBM’s manufacturing facility in Bromont, Canada and at IBM’s state-of-the-art Semiconductor Research and Development Center in East Fishkill, N.Y.
Heller Industries is a global industry leading supplier of thermal process solutions for the Semiconductor, SMT and Solar markets. Heller has pioneered many significant technology innovations in the reflow and curing processes. www.hellerindustries.com
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