Viking Provides High Precision and Integrated Component Utilizing the Thin Film Technology

The portable information electronic and the mobile telecommunication products have been developed with the trend of miniature, multi-functional, highly reliable and low cost. For the components, which were designed into the electrical circuit, the passive components, which with the most space consumption and the most chip counts, have been undergoing an integrating competition.

The development of the miniature discrete components applied with the surface mount technology cannot meet the strict requirement for the new generation system products. The area occupied by the components and interconnect trace on the board was critical for space saving and, too many soldering joints not only be harmful to the system reliability but also increase the assembly cost.

The technology team of Viking, led by the President Stone Wei, comprises the engineers with the expertise of material science, chemical, mechanical, electronic and electrical engineering. With several years experience of research in ITRI and management in the related industry, President Wei organized the team to build up a solid technology on the thin film and thick film process. The flexible utilization of thin film and thick film process provides a low cost but high precision methodology on integrating the components. The integrated passive device can consist of the same type of components, i.e., resistor network or capacitor network, or hybrid of different components, i.e., R/C network. The thin-film technology and the design library developed in Viking have played the significant role in integrating passive components together to achieve a compact device with outstanding performance. Components integration can be either in Integrated Passive Device form or in Integrated Module form on the silicon wafer or the ceramic substrate. The Thin-Film Integrated Passive Device consists of R, L and C while the Thin-Film Integrated Module consists of active device and passive device. A well designed integrated device decrease the parasitic effect and keep the signal stably without distortion under transmitting that improves the system performance. With the efficient design in service, Viking provides the customers a new product development model to embed the integrated
components into the system and elevate the product value.

More integrated components will save more circuit board area and solder joints, which will improve the system stability and the fabrication yield rate. As the miniature component down to 0201 size, available SMT equipment obstructs the applications. By using the integrated components, the assembly cost, product reliability, and even on the board design feasibility will be well controlled and friendly for the new products delivered into the market.

Viking exploits thin film technology not only to the integrated components, but also to develop superior characteristic products as chip resistor, chip capacitor and chip inductor. The tolerance of resistance could be as accurate as 0.01% and the TCR could be as low as 10 ppm/oC that the competitors are seldom to archive these specifications. Such a high accuracy chip resistor could be applied in high accuracy multi-meter, mobile and handheld electronic products. The resistance of low TCR current sensor could be lower as 0.5m Ohm that could be applied in power module, battery charger and mobile products. Chip
capacitor performs high Q, low TCC, and 2% of capacitance accuracy, low profile and flexible size that could cater various miniature products. Because of lower dielectric constant of chip capacitors, the performance would be much stable than that of typical MLCC capacitors in high frequency and microwave applications as mobile phone, notebook, PDA and so on. The thickness of chip capacitor could be as thin as 170 m, which has been widely applied in Smart Card and fiber optic connector. For the high performance and high accuracy (1%) of thin film inductor, Viking is the only one manufacturer and provider in Taiwan. Since the structure of thin film inductor is simple and clean, the outstanding performance up to 5.6GHz has widely been assured in wireless LAN, mobile phone, and Bluetooth Module applications.

In following with maturity of thick film, thin film technologies and design ability for the high precision commodity components and the design in integrated products, Viking also provides foundry service as various film deposition, lithography and etching processes to satisfy various customer needs. For example, Printer Head IC fabrication as a micro-heater for the ink cartridge, are provided by Viking with a well controlled metal tap angle and film stress, which achieve a high reliability and are welcome by the customers.

Viking’s strategy is not only to provide the products with an excellent performance, shortest delivery time and price competence, but also to cooperate with the customers to design and develop the high value products according to every individual requirement. The vision is to come up with the customers become the leader of technologies.