Rework of flip chip bonded radiation pixel detectors

In this paper, some practical aspects of reworking flip chip hybridized pixel detectors are discussed. As flip chip technology has been advancing in terms of placement accuracy and reliability, large-area hybrid pixel detectors have been developed. The area requirements are usually fulfilled by placing several readout chips (ROCs) on single sensor chip. However, as the number of ROCs increases, the probability of failure in the hybridization process and the ROC operation also increases. Because high accuracy flip chip bonding takes time, a significant part of the price of a pixel detector comes from the flip chip assembly process itself. As large-area detector substrates are expensive, and many flip chip placements are required, the price of an assembled detector can become very high. In a typical case, there is just one bad ROC (out of several) on a faulty detector to be replaced. Considering the high price of pixel detectors and the fact that reworking faulty ROCs does not take much longer than the original placement, it is worthwhile to investigate the feasibility of a rework process.