Semiconductor device manufacturing: process – Coating of substrate containing semiconductor region or of... – Multiple layers
Reexamination Certificate
2003-03-06
2004-10-12
Smith, Matthew (Department: 2825)
Semiconductor device manufacturing: process
Coating of substrate containing semiconductor region or of...
Multiple layers
C438S107000, C438S108000, C438S109000, C438S612000, C438S615000, C438S459000, C438S462000, C257S669000, C257S676000, C257S787000, C257S723000, C257S685000, C257S778000, C257S782000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06803324
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a thin circuit block and method of producing the thin circuit block, a thin wiring circuit device formed from the circuit blocks to have a thin, multilayer structure and method of producing the wiring circuit device, and a semiconductor device formed from the circuit block to have a thin, multilayer structure and method of producing the semiconductor device.
Recently, various electronic apparatuses are designed to be more compact and lightweight and have advanced or multiple functions. Also, a wiring circuit devices or semiconductor device, used in such electronic apparatuses, is designed to be smaller and more multilayer. The smaller, more multilayer structure of the wiring circuit device has been implemented by minimizing the via size and wiring pitch in a wiring circuit as well as by the technological developments such as smaller and multi-pin IC package, bare-chip mounting of semiconductor chips, minimization and surface mounting of passive components such as a capacitor, resistor, etc. With such a smaller structure of the wiring circuit device, however, it has become extremely difficult to produce and mount passive components on a circuit board in the wiring circuit device by such conventional techniques. Therefore, there has also been proposed a wiring circuit device having embedded therein components deposited directly on the principal surface, or in a layer, of a circuit board.
In the above wiring circuit device, the directly deposited components such as a resistor and capacitor are formed on a ceramic substrate by a thick film method in which pastes of metal and insulating material are printed by the screen printing, for example. However, the thick film method cannot implement any accurate pattern and thickness of the passive components and also it is not highly reliable upon because of its unstable repeatability etc. Also, since in the process of forming the passive components by the thick film method, pastes applied to a substrate are heated at a high temperature for sintering, so the substrate should have a high thermal resistance. Namely, the substrate can only be formed from limited kinds of material, which will lead to relatively high production costs.
On the other hand, the semiconductor device uses a so-called system large-scale integrated circuit (LSI) having predetermined functions integrated in one semiconductor chip. Also, with the evolution of the processing technique, a system LSI having integrated therein a mixture of different functions such as logical and memory functions or analog and digital functions, for example, has been provided for use as such a semiconductor device. Further, to meet the demands for the semiconductor device having a smaller, thinner structure, it has been proposed to attain such a reduced thickness by polishing a semiconductor yet in the state of a wafer, for example, at the back thereof by a mechanical or chemical method or by both.
Since the system LSI has a plurality of functional blocks formed therein through a plurality of processes corresponding to the functional blocks, so the number of processes will be larger, resulting in an increased time of production and a lower yield, which adds to production costs. To solve the problems of such a system LSI, it has also been proposed to adopt a multi-chip module (MCM), for example, in lieu of the system LSI. The MCM is a semiconductor module formed by producing the above functional blocks as individual semiconductor chips in their respective processes and mounting the semiconductor chips together on the same wiring board, and which has similar functions to those of the system LSI.
To solve the aforementioned problems of the wiring circuit device, it has been proposed to provide a wiring circuit device having components embedded therein by any one of the thin film methods such as photolithography, sputtering, evaporation and the like as shown in
FIGS. 29 and 30
.
FIG. 29
shows a wiring circuit device
100
having an insulating layer
102
formed on the principal surface of a core substrate
101
, and a wiring pattern
103
and resistor
104
deposited on the insulating layer
102
. The resistor
104
is formed from nickel-chrome (Ni—Cr), tantalum nitride (TaN) or tantalum (Ta) for example. It should be noted that the tantalum nitride is preferably usable to form the resistor
104
because its temperature coefficient (TCR) is as small as below 100 ppm/° C. and life is stably long.
FIG. 30
shows another wiring circuit device
105
including the core layer
101
having the insulating layer
102
formed on the principal surface thereof and the wiring pattern
103
formed on the insulating layer
102
, as in the aforementioned wiring circuit device
100
. The wiring circuit board
105
further includes a capacitor
106
deposited between end portions
103
a
and
103
b
of the wiring pattern
103
. More specifically, the capacitor
106
includes the lower wiring pattern
103
a
(end portion of the wiring pattern
103
), a dielectric layer
107
deposited on the lower wiring pattern
103
a
, and the upper wiring pattern
103
b
(end portion of the wiring pattern
103
) stacked on the dielectric layer
107
. The dielectric layer
107
is formed from tantalum oxide (Ta
2
O
5
), silicon nitride (Si
3
N
4
), barium titanate (BaTiO) or the like. Tantalum oxide can be deposited directly on the substrate by sputtering. A tantalum oxide layer having a desired thickness can be formed by anodic oxidation of the tantalum layer and tantalum nitride layer and making the oxide grow on the surface of the substrate.
The core substrate of the wiring circuit device is formed from a conductive silicon substrate which will function when a passive component is formed on the substrate. To connect, by the wire bonding technique, multiple lands formed on the wiring pattern to lands, respectively, on a mother substrate when mounting the wiring circuit device on a mother substrate, a terminal pattern is formed on the surface of a layer in which a passive component is to be formed. Therefore, the wiring circuit device has to undergo processes of the terminal pattern forming and wire bonding.
A communication terminal unit or the like should essentially be compact and lightweight for portability, and so it includes a radio frequency (RF) module provided in a transmission/reception unit thereof to convert analog RF signals.
FIG. 31
illustrates an example of the RF module. The RF module is generally indicated with a reference
110
. As shown, the RF module
110
includes a base circuit board
111
, and an RF device layer
112
stacked on the base circuit board
111
and in which passive components are formed by deposition by the thin film and thick film methods. The RF device layer
112
has a first wiring layer
115
formed on a wiring pattern
113
on the base circuit board
111
with an insulating layer
114
provided between the wiring pattern
113
and the layer
115
. In the RF device layer
112
, the wiring pattern
113
on the base circuit board
111
is connected to the first wiring layer
115
by a via
116
formed in the insulating layer
114
.
The passive components formed in the RF device layer
112
include a resistor
117
and capacitor
118
deposited on the first wiring layer
115
. Further, the RF device layer
112
includes a second insulating layer
119
formed on the first wiring layer
115
, and a second wiring layer
120
stacked on the second insulating layer
119
with a via
116
being formed in the latter. In the RF device layer
112
, the second wiring layer
120
has an inductor
121
formed thereon. It should be noted that the inductor
121
is generally formed not by any thin film method such as sputtering because of a gain loss, but by a thick film method such as plating for example.
Since in such an RF transmission/reception module (will be referred to as “RF module” hereunder)
110
, the resistor
117
and capacitor
118
are formed with a high precision on the base circuit board
111
by the thin film method such as
Nishitani Yuji
Ogawa Tsuyoshi
Okubora Akihiko
Anya Igwe U.
Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP
Sony Corporation
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