John Boston
Managing Director
Custom Interconnect
John has over 47 years’ experience working in semiconductor packaging and electronics assembly technology, all of which has been in industry. Starting in STC Paignton in 1978 in their Thick Film Hybrid division and then transferring to their high reliability Optoelectronic Division. Over the next 11 years, he worked everything from Laser and LED die bond / wirebond, fiber-optic alignment, hermetic lid sealing, leak checking, life testing and failure analysis for Hi-Rel optical communication systems that would ultimately see STC being acquired by Nortel Networks. He joined Custom Interconnect Ltd (CIL) in 1989, where he remains after 37 years. The first 6 years were spent as a Design Engineer / Design Manager / Technical Manager on semiconductor packaging / complex PCBA’s and in 1995 he became Operations Director of CIL and Managing Director in 2001. In 2023, CIL opened its BP2 facility which is the UK’s largest OSAT facility and CIL is the UK’s 3rd largest EMS provider.
Presentations
Medium Volume Production and Advanced Packaging in the UK
The UK or in fact Europe cannot compete with the Far East / China for high volume advanced semiconductor packaging. However, there are multiple applications whereby annual quantities are much smaller, but still complex semiconductor packaging is required. This presentation will cover annual quantities ranging from 10off – 500,000off per annum with advanced packaging covering 3D Heterogenous integration, RF devices, wafer bumping for medical devices, SiC & GaN power device packaging and high Cu wirebond count devices for AI processor manufacture. All these technologies are being developed and manufactured in the UK with European OEM and chip start partners.