Three-dimensional reconstruction of wafer solder bumps using binary pattern projection

Abstract

As the electronic industry advances rapidly, the shrunk dimension of the device leads to more stringent requirement on process control and quality assurance. For instance, the tiny size of the solder bumps grown on wafers for direct die-to-die bonding pose great challenge to the inspection of the bumps' 3D quality. Traditional pattern projection method of recovering 3D is about projecting a light pattern to the inspected surface and imaging the illuminated surface from one or more points of view. However, image saturation and the specular nature of the bump surface are issues. This paper proposes a new 3D reconstruction mechanism for inspecting the surface of such wafer bumps. It is still based upon the light pattern projection framework, but uses the Ronchi pattern - a pattern that contrasts with the traditionally used gray level one. With the use of a parallel or point light source in combination with a binary grating, it allows a discrete pattern to be projected onto the inspected surface. As the projected pattern is binary, the image information is binary as well. With such a bright-or-dark world for each image position, the above-mentioned difficult issues are avoided. Preliminary study shows that the mechanism holds promises that existing approaches do not. © 2005 SPIE and IS&T.