Electrophoretic Materials in Wafer Level Packages for Solid State Imagers to Meet Automotive Reliability Standards

Solid state image sensors are increasingly being adopted for automotive applications. The harsh operating environment and requirement for long life means reliability standards for automotive components far exceed those of the normal sphere of use, namely mobile telephones. Electrophoretic paints are widely used in the automotive and construction industries to endow fabricated metal products with corrosion resistant, decorative, coatings. This paper describes the first known use of these materials for semiconductor packaging. The application is a wafer level packaging process to encapsulate image sensors, which will comfortably surpass the automotive standard for reliability.