Korea's Reliance on Japanese Products Likely to Drop
The Korea Institute of Industrial Technology announced on Dec. 16 that it has developed an original epoxy resin manufacturing technology and produced an epoxy molding compound better in thermal expansion than Japanese products by using the technology.
The compound is an organic material used in back-end processing in the semiconductor industry and the global market size is estimated at 1.5 trillion won. Although South Korea’s dependence on the compound imported from Japan is currently as high as 87 percent, the newly developed technology is expected to drop the percentage in packaging, the final process of semiconductor production.
The institute designed and synthesized a structurally novel epoxy resin on its own and reduced the degree of thermal expansion to the lowest level in the world. Those imported from Japan are characterized by being much higher in thermal expansion coefficient than semiconductor chips and this has often led to bending of the entire component in the packaging process.
Epoxy material manufacturers have tried to resolve the problem by lowering the coefficient with an increase in silica content. This, however, has resulted in an excessive increase in viscosity and a decrease in the ease of processing.
The technology developed by the institute is characterized by maintaining the ease and yet lowering the coefficient to approximately 3 ppm/°C, close to that of a semiconductor chip, simply through a change in the structure of epoxy resin itself. In addition, the epoxy molding compound of the institute enables large-area packaging of 12 inches or more unlike those from Japan, which means it can be widely used in relation to self-driving vehicles, artificial intelligence devices, etc.