The Year in Review: A Message from the CEO

A review of 2022 covers roadmap activities, a grant from NIST, an expanding project portfolio and more.

Roadmap Activities

It has been a year of exciting changes for our roadmap, which has been a long standing cornerstone of INEMI's value to the industry. We are advancing to the next generation of roadmap, moving from a traditional document-based approach to a novel online structure. This next version of the roadmap will not only be more user-friendly, but will allow greater flexibility for reacting and adjusting to changes in the industry. The infrastructure to support the new roadmap is now in place and is being populated with the first critical topics. We have established leadership of, and are currently building new teams for, multiple priority topics, such as board assembly, PCB, packaging and heterogenous integration, and flexible hybrid electronics. Initial versions of the mmWave materials characterization and test information are already up on the new INEMI Roadmap server. 

NIST Grant

In May of this year, INEMI was awarded a significant grant from NIST's Advanced Manufacturing Technology Roadmap (MFGTech) Program to create the 5G/6G mmWave Materials and Electrical Test Technology Roadmap (5G/6G MAESTRO). The INEMI team, which includes several INEMI member organizations and others from the electronics manufacturing industry as well as research institutes, will develop a comprehensive 15-year hardware roadmap for mmWave materials. The focus is on advancing the manufacture of leading-edge 5G and 6G products to help accelerate development of the next generation of U.S. wireless networks.

Project Portfolio

Another key cornerstone of INEMI's value to members is our project portfolio and it's been a very active year in this area. Projects continue to focus on issues that will help our members save time and minimize the risk of new technology adoption by leveraging resources across the supply chain to address common industry gaps and challenges. The outcomes from these projects often influence and speed up supply chain readiness through defining best practices and the development of proven test methods. 

INEMI teams completed eight projects during 2022 and launched seven new projects addressing challenges in key industry priority areas such as: 

• Advanced packaging — project teams are looking at new materials characterization techniques and the performance of new high density interconnect materials sets  
• 5G/mmWave — our latest project focuses on the development of an industry standard reference material 
• Smart manufacturing — two new projects are focused on the impact of AI on PCBA  
• PCB & laminates — investigating the impact of processes and materials on CAF and ECM in higher density boards  

All seven of the new projects are in early stages and accepting additional participants.  

INEMI member-led technology teams have continued to create a rich pipeline of more than 20 project ideas to add to the portfolio, ensuring our collaborative efforts are current and relevant to the membership. Download our project portfolio for information about all INEMI projects, including new ones in the pipeline. 

Project Output

INEMI technical teams published seven significant reports this year, including one on 5G materials characterization and testing and a white paper on low temperature materials for first level interconnect (both available to members only). 

As people have started to travel again and conferences are meeting face-to-face, INEMI project teams have had a presence at industry conferences around the world. Our teams published more than 32 conference papers and presentations during 2022, and five of those papers received conference recognition for excellence. The following teams' papers were recognized, underscoring the quality of technical information being produced and the industry interest in these areas: 

• BiSn-Based Low-Temperature Soldering Process and Reliability
• Best Practices for Expanded Beam Connectors in Data Centers  
• Moisture Induced Expansion Metrology for Packaging Polymetric Materials
• 1st Level Interconnect Void Characterization 
  

Moving Ahead

We are moving into 2023 at full speed. There are already two new projects holding call-for-participation webinars in January and February, and we are planning a roadmap workshop in early 2023, along with several other conference appearances and presentations throughout the year. Our sincerest thanks to our member companies as well as other associates and partners for your contributions to INEMI's success this year. We look forward to working with you in the year ahead.

Shekhar Chandrashekhar
[email protected]