US Patent Issued to SET NORTH AMERICA on March 4 for "Thermocompression bonding with passivated nickel-based contacting metal" (California Inventor)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,245,381, issued on March 4, was assigned to SET NORTH AMERICA LLC (Chester, N.H.).

"Thermocompression bonding with passivated nickel-based contacting metal" was invented by Eric Frank Schulte (Santa Barbara, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods and systems for low-force, low-temperature thermocompression bonding. The present application teaches new methods and structures for three-dimensional integrated circuits, in which cold thermocompression bonding is used to provide reliable bonding. To achieve this, reduction and passivation steps are preferably both used to reduce native oxide on the contact metals and to prevent reformat...