Toppan, a Toppan Group company and wholly owned subsidiary of Toppan Holdings, will install a pilot line to conduct research and development of advanced semiconductor packaging at the Ishikawa plant (Nomi, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan) acquired in 2023, aiming to commission the line in July 2026.

Organic redistribution layer (RDL) interposer development to be conducted on the pilot line has been selected for the research and development project of the enhanced infrastructures for post-5G information and communication systems / development of manufacturing technologies for advanced semiconductors (subsidy), for which the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) solicited applications.

In the area of advanced semiconductors used for applications such as generative AI and autonomous driving, packaging substrates are being scaled up and chiplet structures1 are being adopted to achieve higher densities. Chiplet structures require intermediate substrates called interposers2 to connect chips to packaging substrates. Silicon interposers are currently the predominant type, but due to challenges in scaling up, the industry is looking toward the establishment of interposer technology based on large glass substrates as an alternative to silicon.

Utilizing the new pilot line, Toppan plans to verify technologies for future mass production by pursuing R&D on components required for advanced semiconductor packaging, such as interposers using large glass substates as well as glass cores and organic RDL interposers.

The project selected by NEDO aims to simultaneously achieve low power consumption and high-capacity data transfer by developing submicron interconnect fabrication technologies for organic RDL interposers. Toppan will advance the development of technologies and materials in collaboration with Osaka Metropolitan University, Toyama Prefectural University, Shinshu University, the Institute of Science Tokyo, and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.