Fort Washington – October 13, 2026 -- Kulicke & Soffa Industries (NASDAQ: KLIC) has been named the recipient of the 2026 SEMI Award for North America for its fluxless thermocompression bonding (FTC) technology, which enables interconnect pitches below 10 microns.
The award is presented during the CEO Summit Keynotes at SEMICON West. SEMI describes it as one of the semiconductor industry's highest honors for technical and commercial contributions to manufacturing.
K&S combines plasma pre-cleaning and in-situ formic acid oxide reduction to remove post-bond flux cleaning
Traditional thermocompression bonding often requires post-bond flux cleaning, a step that becomes harder at finer interconnect pitches. K&S's proprietary FTC process pairs advanced plasma pre-cleaning with in-situ formic acid oxide reduction. The company says this delivers high-yield, ultra-fine-pitch interconnects while simplifying manufacturing and reducing production costs.
FTC supports wafer-level, substrate-level and panel-level manufacturing environments. It is now a foundational element of the company's advanced packaging roadmap, which includes the APTURA™ platform.
FTC targets the cost and complexity gap left by hybrid bonding
K&S positions FTC against hybrid bonding, which it describes as highly capable but a source of significant manufacturing complexity and cost. John Molnar, VP and General Manager of Advanced Solutions, said FTC delivers hybrid-bonding-class performance with more accessible manufacturing. He said this accelerates adoption of advanced packaging for AI, high-performance computing and silicon photonics.
The company's advanced packaging portfolio spans thermocompression bonding, hybrid bonding enablement technologies, wedge bonding and vertical interconnect solutions for complex heterogeneous applications.
CEO Raj Talluri ties packaging scalability to semiconductor performance
CEO Raj Talluri said semiconductor performance now depends critically on advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration. In his view, scaling interconnect density efficiently and economically matters more than ever.