Wafer-level packaging of image sensors

Each year, several billion CMOS image sensors are manufactured to meet the growing demand for cameras in electronics products, notably camera phones, laptops (web cams) and now TVs. Fabricating device packages at the wafer-level provides economic advantage over discrete approaches since the materials and process costs are shared among the good die on the wafer, which can number many thousands for small die. Wafer-level packages also have the technical advantages of smaller dimensions, shorter interconnects and more consistent part-to-part performance. This article discusses the use of wafer-level packages, which satisfy the requirements.