A unique application of decapsulation combining laser and plasma

Often the greatest cost for developing a new package or system is the acquisition of bare chips. To meet this challenge, a unique technique involving laser and plasma has been developed for extracting dice or chips for reuse and repackaging. Epoxy molded integrated circuit (IC) packages are decapsulated using a combination of a neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) laser and reactive ion etch (RIE) plasma etcher. Using the parameters mentioned in this paper, a yield of over 70% of functional packages was achieved at the end of decapsulation.