Dow Electronic Materials said it is building a new manufacturing and testing facility in Cheonan, Korea, for metallization materials used in advanced-chip packaging.
The new facility will meet specifications to manufacture electronic-grade materials, and will include Class 1,000 and Class 10 clean-room spaces for product packaging, according to the business unit of Dow Chemical Co.
The facility also will include quality-control and applications-testing labs.
Dow Chemical expects the facility to be operational in second-quarter 2012.
"We are positioning this facility in Korea to provide material supply close to our local and regional customers," said Leo Linehan, global business director for advanced packaging technologies.
Initially, the factory will make components for Dow's lead-free Solderon BP tin-silver, which includes low-alpha tin, and electroplating copper used in Intervia and Ultralink products for advanced-chip packaging and Ultrafill and Nanoplate products for semiconductor applications.
Dow Chemical also makes metallization products at its sites in Marlborough, Mass.; Sasakami, Japan; and Lucerne, Switzerland.
"Chip packaging continues to be increasingly important in electronics, particularly mobile devices, as the demand for more functionality in the same or smaller footprint grows," the company said in a news release.
"3-D packaging, which allows multiple chips to be connected and stacked, is increasingly important because it delivers greater functionality and faster data transmission - all within the same compact space. 3-D packaging requires high-performance metallization materials that are manufactured with tight quality specifications."
