GGI technology for the application of low profile image sensor module

Image sensor is one of the fastest growing market segments of semiconductor. The major applications are still digital camera, digital video camcorder, surveillance camera, game player, PC/NB camera, automotive and mobile phone. In the past years, mobile phone application is the major driving force of imager sensor technologies and dominated the sensor shipment of 87%. The module assembly technology for mobile phone is based on the die/wire bonding technology. The total module height is limited by Lens design, die or package thickness and the substrate thickness. The market trend of image sensor is toward the image format with higher pixel number. Mobile phone is the major driving force and had pushed the industry to develop image sensor from VGA to 5M. The application of the highly growing smart phone market is a new driving force to push the industry to develop the sensor with higher pixel number. Image sensor with 5M pixels will be the main stream for smart phone in this year and 8~16M will be the next step. However, with the increasing of the pixel number, the module height is also increasing and will limit the phone design. The new technologies to reduce the height of camera module are necessary. For a low profile module, the die/wire bonding technologies cannot provide the lowest module height. A new process based on Flip Chip technology was introduced. In this paper, a new process and package design are introduced to replace the die/wire technology to have a lowest module height.