Electronics manufacturing tribology: Future opportunities and challenges

Electronics manufacturing is undergoing rapid transformation with advances toward high intelligence, higher integration, and nanodevices. The surface- and interfacial-related tribological issues during the electronic fabrication process have become one of the predominant factors affecting the production efficiency, product quality, and performance of devices because the miniscule size of newly developed devices tends toward the atomic scale. This poses a significant challenge in comprehensively understanding the role of tribology during electronic fabrication. This review proposes the concept of electronics manufacturing tribology. Since then, the inseparable development history of electronics manufacturing and tribology has returned. The important role of tribology in promoting the development of electronics manufacturing has been described in detail. The last part of this review highlights the future opportunities and challenges of electronics manufacturing tribology. It is hoped that such a review will shed light on the future development of high-performance electronics manufacturing and enrich the micro- and nanotribology fundamentals as well.