Localized Electrochemical Manufacturing (LEM): A Scalable High-Density Interconnect Platform for Next-Generation Heterogeneous Integration

As advanced packaging outpaces front-end scaling, heterogeneous integration demands interconnects with higher density, larger routing area, and more efficient manufacturing processes. Syenta’s Localized Electrochemical Metallization (LEM) is a maskless, additive copper (and other metals) patterning method that enables 1 µm line/space interconnects on 300 mm wafers and panels (including organic substrates) while eliminating 30-50% SAP and damascene steps. By directly transferring patterns through a localized electrochemical process, LEM supports large-area RDL without reticle stitching, critical for chiplet-based AI/HPC architectures and HBM integration. With this platform, addressing the AI Memory Wall becomes a reality. Modern AI accelerators are limited not by compute, but by data movement. HBM-to-logic bandwidth scaling is now dominated by RDL density limits. LEM’s fine-pitch, large-area metallization provides 5–10× higher bandwidth density, directly alleviating this bottleneck and enabling larger multi-die systems. LEM reduces interconnect process complexity by 30–50% and accelerates cycle time by ~40%. The presentation highlights recent achievements in density, area, and mixed-CD structures, along with the roadmap toward sub-micron multilayer integration.