Magnetic alignment for high precision 3D assembly

In microelectronics, 3D integration and assembly definitely appears as a very efficient option to achieve highly integrated chips.

It offers major benefits such as combining heterogeneous technologies, combining high-performance and low-power chips, increasing data transfer bandwidth in memory above logic circuits, etc. 3D assembly is realized by bonding two wafers or chips face to face on a wafer. In this bonding process, the number of interchips interconnects is limited by the accuracy of the alignment process.

Presently, alignment methods rely on optical alignment techniques which offer ±0.2m resolution for wafer-to-wafer bonding or only ±1m resolution for die-to-wafer bonding. This is relatively poor and limit the density of interconnects and therefore the bandwidth of interchip communication.

In this ERC PoC project, we intend to establish the viability of a novel magnetic alignment approach based on nanomagnetism and spin electronics which could yield unprecedented accuracy in alignment during wafer bonding.

The goals of MAGALIGN are i) to make a proof of concept of this novel alignment method, ii) optimize it and develop the design tools to exploit it, iii) Develop industrialization strategy.