LONDON — The market for thin film integrated passive devices (IPD) is set to grow from $615 million this year to be worth just over $1 billion by 2013 and $1.8 billion two years later, according to market trackers Yole Developpement (Lyon, France).

"From a commodity technology initially developed to replace bulky discrete passive components, thin‐film IPD's are now a growing industry trend driven for RF, ESD & EMI protection, high brightness LEDs and digital mixed signal applications", says a just published report from Yole.

The researchers note that, whether it is to reduce space on the application board, for SiPs, to enhance performance or to reduce cost at the system level, "IPD's are spreading to most electronic sectors, from low volume to mass market businesses in aerospace, military, medical, industrial, lighting, communications, and PC applications."

Looking ahead, IPDs will continue to contribute significantly to bridging the widening gap between the ever shrinking geometries of CMOS IC's and the lagging packaging technologies, the report on the sector notes.

"IPD's enable the assembly of increasingly complete and autonomous systems with the integration of diverse electronic functions such as sensors, RF transceivers, MEMS, power amplifiers, power management units and digital processors."

Thin film IPD's are poised to extend the use of Wafer‐Level Packaging (WLP) and Through silicon Via (TSV) technology platforms to many IC package solutions as well as to the discrete passive component industry, the researchers add.

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