Deliverables
A working group on thermo-mechanical simulation was initiated in the first year of COMPETE (1998), with a simple work programme. But it quickly turned out that no large-scale transnational research programme existed in this domain, because of its very emerging and fragmented nature. Many academic organisations were involved in various research activities, which remain poorly coordinated at the European or national levels.
The need for exchanging on local programmes, for commenting on directions to be taken was strong enough so that a small European conference was organised by COMPETE under the impulsion of Philips in spring 2000. The success was immediately there, with 125 participants from 15 countries, including countries from the Far East. After 2 other sessions in Paris, France, in 2001 and 2002, the conference has now reached maturity and is recognised as the main, if not the unique event of this specialised field.
The last edition brought together 100 specialists with a strong participation from USA and Far East countries, addressing many topics, from pure research to practical current problems (e.g. reliability of lead-free solders), through 60 papers of high quality. The conference has a dedicated web site at: http://www.eurosime.com
-The conference is organised by the following organisations:
- MTA (FR), Philips CFT Eindhoven (NL), Philips Semiconductors Nijmegen (NL)
- Siemens Berlin (DE)
- University of Hull (GB),University of Delft (NL)
- National Microelectronics Research Centre (GB)
- University of Barcelona (ES),TNO (NL), IVF (SE)
- IMEC (BE)
- University of Wroclaw (PL)
Two GROWTH projects, DONDOMCM and DONDODEM (completed December 2001), yielded novel methods and products based on the various formulations and electrical and optical characteristics of inorganic/organic materials, patented by Fraunhofer-ISC, branded ORMOCERs.
These materials have or will have many applications in several distinct domains of industry. Regarding the microelectronics and electronics manufacturing industry, the materials are highly promising in respect to their optical capabilities at micron scale, making them materials of choice for realising optical interconnections between boards, modules and integrated circuits. Coupled to VCSEL emitters and PiN diode receivers, they are able to be laid out in optical buses carrying gigabits per second of data, breaking the many interconnections barriers raised by the current electrical implementation schemes.
If the outcomes of these projects are actually innovative, they constitute a real technical breakthrough and are faced with the weight and momentum of existing, validated design and manufacturing techniques. Their gradual implementation will probably require several years and will start through high-end users. Many organisations are concerned by the implementation of these new materials, especially in the computer and telecom fields.
The goal was to highlight, whenever possible, the impact of EC-funded GROWTH and IST projects in the commercial offer, and the technical capabilities of the partners.
The on-line catalogue was designed as a clever way of disseminating both projects results and technical offer of partners of projects. Visitors can enter the catalogue through 3 main entry paths:
- the company name
- categories of products and services
- collaborative projects results
This is so there are links between products-services-technologies and companies, products-services-technologies and EC projects and finally between companies and EC projects
SimWitch was born at the beginning of COMPETE after a few meetings of the "Cost Analysis" working group, in 1998. These meetings proved that no generic method was really formalized for assessing costs at the early stage of design. Besides various inputs from the members of the group it proved nearly impossible to melt the various requirements and methods of the members into exchangeable data, which could have enabled comparisons.
Based on a generic simulator, MTAs contribution was the design and realization of dedicated software. SimWitch was successfully used by some members, especially The Bull and Thales Research Laboratory, who respectively used it within the FLIPAC and TRILAP projects of GROWTH programme, to assess the cost structure of the demonstrators. SimWitch is a software tool that aims at simulating everything resembling a line of production, in terms of time and cost.
Not pretending to compete with dedicated commercial and proprietary tools, we have designed it as a first approach tool for evaluating the cost of a process step and performing cost sensitivity analysis. Being a true time-simulator running on a Windows based Personal Computer; it implements functionalities such as delays and throughput-bottlenecks, which can hardly be taken into account by spreadsheets applications. It is a general-purpose tool, which uses a handful of generic building blocks that are not restricted for a specific application or industrial domain.
Building blocks receive input flows of items and deliver an output flow of other items, through the connection between them. This time simulation of the internal flows of items modeless the interdependency of all building blocks, and permits a realistic computation of the fixed and recurring costs incurred by the system. The possibility of "sweeping" (sequentially assigning a set of values) any parameter of a block is intended to perform cost-sensitivity analysis, and is very useful for comparing the impact of any parameter in the items unit cost at every level of the line.
A primary objective of the COMPETE network was to foster dissemination of projects results by favouring communication between the members of various projects, so that redundancy is minimised and exploitation by similar organisations is improved.
Dissemination was also organised outside the network so that non-members organisations could benefit from research outputs. Dissemination and communication were practically organised as follows:
- Many technical meetings within COMPETE, bringing together members and outside guests, as technical presentations, panels;
- Working groups meetings;
- Participation to international or local fairs and conferences, like SMT-Hybrid, Semicon Europa, Productronica and smaller or more specialised events like ESREF, IMAPS etc;
- Availability of 60 synopsis of projects on the web site, plus many other public documents produced by Members.
The COMPETE web site has been on since April 1998, providing the COMPETE members and the world-wide community of scientists and engineers with updated information and documents on the networks life and productions.
Meaningful is the download of more than 4 000 copies of synopsis of various EC-funded projects. Though COMPETE is now over, the site is now gracefully maintained by MTA until end of year, and serves as document repository for the OPTELPAC network on materials for opto-electronic components.
The EC directive on heavy metals ban has and will have for years a strong technical and economical impact on the electronics industry. Since many research actions have already been led in Europe (example: the IDEALS project), essentially the tasks to be achieved concern the transition to and implementation of lead-free soldering processes and materials, whose financial impact may be high.
Many initiatives were undertaken at national levels, especially in Great-Britain and Germany. Nevertheless, most industrial manufacturers, and a few large organisations, are faced with new situations, though it looks as though formulation based on tin silver copper is the most convenient, replacement alloys are not yet standardised; long-term reliability of such alloys is estimated but not yet proven. During the transition period, manufacturers have to assemble components with lead-finishes by leadless solders, etc.
Though the lead-ban is a European regulation, no accompanying and coordinating measures were apparently anticipated to ease its implementation. Initiatives like the ELFNET network are a compensation for this lack of initiative and attempt to coordinate and optimise research, facilitating smooth implementation of lead-free soldering techniques.
Exploitable results
Based on the different requirements of the user partners in the consortium, a total of 21 different test chips have been defined, which can be divided in 4 categories of size (A: 0.5 X 1.5 mm, B: 7 X 7 mm, C: 15 X 15 mm and D: 2.5 X 15 mm). The testchips contained a selection of different test structures for measuring electrical, thermal, diffusion and mechanical stress properties.
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