Fabrication of a DRAM cube using a novel laser patterned 3-D interconnect process

A new process is described for producing metal interconnect on three dimensional surfaces. The process makes use of a laser to expose an electrophoretic photoresist which is conformally plated onto a thin metal seed layer that covers the various surfaces. After resist exposure and development, copper, nickel, and gold are plated onto the seed layer through the resist mask. Finally, the residual resist and seed layer are removed leaving conformally plated metal traces. The process has been applied to the reroute of the I/O pads of DRAM chips to form new pads on one of the long sidewalls of the bare die. Die are stacked and bonded and pads are arranged so that data lines and some control lines in a stack are staggered while address, power, ground, and some control lines are positioned identically. This architecture permits bonding of the stack to a single sided flex tape using an anisotropically conducting adhesive. The flex is bonded to a circuit board to complete the assembly. The DRAM stack fabrication and attachment process is relatively simple and may be attractive for high density 3D packaging for consumer electronics.