German technology supplier SCHMID Group has won an order to provide wet-process equipment for a glass-core substrate manufacturing facility planned in South Asia. The customer is a US-based developer of glass technologies for advanced semiconductor packaging, but its identity has not been disclosed.
The project is designed for production of approximately 70,000 glass panels a year once fully ramped. It will also target glass interposers and components for three-dimensional heterogeneous semiconductor integration. The capacity figure is a design objective, not reported output from an operating plant.
SCHMID will record the order in its fourth-quarter 2026 order intake. The supplier has not disclosed the equipment value, number of individual machines, delivery schedule or the customer’s timetable for commercial production.
The proposed factory is intended to move a technology developed over nearly two decades from research and pilot production towards industrial manufacturing. According to SCHMID, the customer has developed proprietary photo-definable glass-ceramic and through-glass via technologies supported by a patent portfolio.
Glass-core substrates provide an alternative to organic-core materials used in many semiconductor packages. The substrate supports mechanical assembly and a network of electrical connections between semiconductor devices and the surrounding circuit structure.
As chip packages incorporate more components, engineers must route increasing numbers of connections across larger areas. The substrate must maintain alignment during manufacturing and operation while accommodating the mechanical and thermal loads associated with the assembled package.
Some organic substrate constructions can experience warpage as temperature changes or additional layers are processed. A glass core offers high dimensional stability and flatness, characteristics that can assist accurate patterning and alignment in large package formats.
Those properties do not automatically guarantee a higher production yield. Glass can fracture or develop defects during handling, and the processes used to form holes, conductive structures and additional layers must be compatible with its mechanical and surface characteristics.
Through-glass vias provide electrical routes between the two sides of a glass substrate. Their formation requires controlled geometry and subsequent metallisation so that the openings can carry signals or power as intended in the finished semiconductor package.
The manufacturing sequence may include preparing the glass surface, forming the vias, cleaning and conditioning the substrate, depositing conductive materials and building additional interconnection layers. The particular route depends on the customer’s proprietary process.
SCHMID’s contracted scope is wet-process equipment for critical glass-core manufacturing steps. Its wider technology portfolio includes plating, panel-level surface processing and related equipment, but the order should not be described as a supply agreement for the whole factory.
Wet processing uses controlled liquid treatments to clean, modify or deposit material on a surface. Process results depend on chemical concentration, temperature, fluid distribution, treatment duration and the condition of the incoming substrate.
Uniformity is particularly important across a large panel. A coating or metallisation process that works on a small test piece must be capable of producing acceptable results over a much larger area while maintaining the required electrical and dimensional characteristics.
Via metallisation brings additional constraints. A conductive layer must be continuous and appropriately bonded while avoiding defects that could interrupt an electrical pathway or create an unintended connection. Verification of these features forms part of the manufacturing quality process.
Panel-level manufacturing can process multiple future packages within one substrate, but the number of usable devices produced per panel depends on panel dimensions, the package design, the area lost during separation and the manufacturing yield.
The proposed annual figure of 70,000 glass panels therefore cannot be converted directly into a number of chips or finished accelerator packages without further customer specifications. SCHMID has not published those specifications or any measured yield from the future facility.
The customer is targeting applications in artificial intelligence processors, high-performance computing, data centres, telecommunications and aerospace and defence electronics. Such systems increasingly use chiplet architectures that combine multiple semiconductor functions within a shared package.
Heterogeneous integration permits devices fabricated using different technologies to be connected within one assembly. The substrate must provide sufficiently precise electrical routes while the overall package manages heat, power delivery and mechanical stresses.
Glass can help address some packaging requirements but does not remove the need to design and validate those other functions. The benefits depend on achievable interconnect dimensions, defect rates and performance under the intended operating conditions.
SCHMID has been developing equipment for glass-core substrates alongside its established InfinityLine systems for integrated-circuit substrates, high-density interconnects and modified semi-additive processing. The new order extends that equipment work into a proposed volume manufacturing application.
The next milestones will be equipment delivery, installation, qualification and the customer’s production ramp-up. No commissioning result or achieved panel throughput has been announced, leaving the transition from pilot processing to reliable industrial output to be demonstrated.
