Integrated non-evaporable getter layer for moisture and oxygen control in sealed glass-core packages

The glass-core advanced-packaging substrates portfolio targets one of the most consequential materials challenges in next-generation semiconductor packaging: maintaining hermeticity and chemical cleanliness inside sealed glass-core cavities that house copper interconnects and halogen-rich dielectric layers. As chipmakers migrate from laminate to glass-core substrates to achieve tighter via pitch, lower loss, and improved co-planarity, the sealed cavity environment becomes a new reliability battleground. Moisture ingress at even tens of ppm can trigger copper corrosion and dielectric degradation under the combined stress of damp-heat cycling and bias — failure modes that are well-characterized in MEMS and optoelectronics packaging but relatively new to advanced compute substrates. This asset addresses that challenge by integrating a non-evaporable getter (NEG) layer — specifically based on Zr2Fe and Ti3Al alloy compositions — directly within or adjacent to the sealed package region. The getter layer chemisorbs residual oxygen and moisture post-sealing, maintaining a chemically inert interior atmosphere throughout device lifetime. The inclusion of multiple getter candidates (ZrCo, TiZr, ZrV2, Ti2Ni, and Ce2O3) in the covered composition set provides the portfolio with broad freedom to engineer the activation temperature, sorption capacity, and compatibility with adjacent films. This is a supporting asset within the portfolio — its strategic value lies in establishing intellectual property around the getter-integration architecture and in cooperating with the halogen-containing dielectric and corrosion-endpoint claims elsewhere in the portfolio, rather than standing alone as a primary commercial offering. The timing of this filing is tied to a materials-substitution inflection: as glass-core packaging moves from pilot to volume production, package architects are actively specifying the hermeticity budget for the first time, and the choice of getter alloy type and placement is not yet commoditized or locked to a single incumbent. Establishing composition-plus-device-use claims now, backed by computational validation of the primary candidates, positions the portfolio to participate in licensing conversations at the design-specification stage — before those decisions calcify into process flows.

Each candidate is validated by multiple independent machine-learning interatomic potentials. A material advances only when the engines agree on phonon (dynamic) stability — disagreement is surfaced, not hidden.

Zr2Fe crystallizes in the body-centered tetragonal I4/mcm space group, a structure that is characteristic of the Zr2Fe-type intermetallic family. The key functional attribute is the high chemical affinity of zirconium for oxygen and water vapor through chemisorption rather than physisorption: oxygen dissociates and dissolves interstitially into the Zr sub-lattice, and hydroxyl groups react irreversibly at the surface, making the getter action effectively permanent under normal operating conditions. Ti3Al is a complementary intermetallic from the hexagonal DO19 family; its aluminum content moderates the activation temperature and provides a somewhat lower chemisorption onset, potentially allowing the getter layer to become active at seal-cure temperatures rather than requiring a separate activation bake. Together, the two primary leads cover a range of activation-temperature and sorption-capacity design points that a package architect might require depending on the sealing process thermal budget. The computational validation for Zr2Fe was carried out using two independent machine-learning interatomic potentials — MACE and CHGNet — both of which were interrogated for phonon (dynamic) stability. Both potentials agree that the Zr2Fe structure is dynamically stable, returning minimum phonon frequencies of 0.332 THz (MACE) and 0.254 THz (CHGNet) with no imaginary modes anywhere in the Brillouin zone. This cross-potential consensus is the key stability gate: a structure that two independent ML potentials agree is stable, trained on different corpora and using different architectural approaches, is extremely unlikely to be a spurious local minimum or an artifact of a single potential's training distribution. Two independent DFT source calculations additionally underpin the structural energetics. The simulations performed include formation-energy landscape screens (two-engine and three-engine cohesion checks) and a negative-results database cross-check to flag compositions that have been evaluated and deliberately not advanced. ZrNi, for instance, was evaluated and not advanced — a meaningful data point that defines the edge of the composition space the portfolio is willing to defend versus where it has empirical grounds for exclusion. The remaining candidates in the covered set — ZrCo, TiZr, ZrV2, Ti2Ni, and Ce2O3 — extend the composition space along axes of hydrogen co-sorption (ZrCo and ZrV2 are known hydrogen pumps in UHV applications), oxide-based passive scavenging (Ce2O3), and binary zirconium alloy systems (TiZr) that may be deposited by sputtering without a high-temperature activation anneal. Ce2O3 is unusual in this set: it is an oxygen-deficient rare-earth sesquioxide whose oxygen vacancy concentration can be tuned by stoichiometry, making it a distinct mechanistic pathway compared to the intermetallic chemisorbers. Its inclusion adds depth to the composition claims and provides a non-intermetallic alternative that may be patent-whitespace relative to established NEG vendors whose filings concentrate on transition-metal intermetallics. The functional context for the getter layer within the package architecture is critical. The getter is intended to cooperate with halogen-containing dielectric films (the portfolio's related Group B and Group C dielectric claims) and with the corrosion-endpoint detection layer described elsewhere in the portfolio. The halogen species in those dielectric films — chlorine or fluorine compounds incorporated for dielectric constant tuning or adhesion promotion — can be a secondary source of corrosive chemistry in the sealed cavity, particularly during thermal cycling when trace amounts outgas. The getter layer must therefore have adequate sorption capacity not only for moisture and oxygen ingress through the seal, but also for any halogen-bearing vapor evolving from the dielectric stack. This cooperative architecture — where the getter, the dielectric chemistry, and the corrosion-detection endpoint form an integrated reliability system — is the core technical differentiator of this portfolio relative to a getter used in isolation.

The addressable market for integrated getter solutions in advanced semiconductor packaging is a subset of the broader hermetic and near-hermetic packaging materials market. The total addressable market for this specific application — NEG getter materials and integration services for sealed glass-core and related advanced substrates — is estimated at $200–500 million, a figure that reflects the early stage of glass-core volume adoption and the niche nature of getter integration relative to the total substrate bill of materials. That estimate should be read as an order-of-magnitude bound rather than a precise forecast: the glass-core substrate market itself is still in transition from pilot-line to volume, and the getter-integration design decision has not yet been made for most product families in the pipeline. The buyers in this market are hermetic-package manufacturers — including the substrate makers building glass-core panels, OSAT houses performing cavity sealing, and, in some verticals, the system-OEMs who specify the hermeticity budget at the package architecture level. The licensing or royalty logic for an asset of this type is most naturally a per-package or per-wafer royalty attached to a process license, or alternatively a material supply agreement in which the getter alloy is supplied in thin-film sputtering-target form with the associated process recipe. Given the relatively small market size, the commercial upside is moderate in absolute dollar terms but strategically significant: establishing the composition-plus-integration claim now means that as glass-core substrates scale to higher volumes over the next five to eight years, the portfolio participates in that ramp without requiring additional R&D investment. The reliability imperative driving this market is damp-heat and bias-temperature-humidity testing under JEDEC standards, where moisture-induced copper corrosion and dielectric film degradation are the primary failure mechanisms. Package architects who specify a getter layer are buying reliability margin — the ability to pass more aggressive test conditions, extend warranty periods, or qualify for automotive and aerospace applications where hermeticity requirements are substantially more stringent than consumer electronics. In those higher-reliability segments, the willingness to pay for a validated getter integration approach is meaningfully higher than in the consumer IC substrate market.

bounds interior moisture/O2 budget; extends damp-heat/bias reliability

ordered integration cooperating with Group B/C films

The most natural acquirers or licensees for this asset are the hermetic-package manufacturers and advanced substrate suppliers who will be specifying getter integration as part of their glass-core panel process flows — companies such as large OSAT groups building out glass-core capability, glass-core substrate joint ventures between panel makers and semiconductor packaging companies, and the advanced packaging divisions of integrated device manufacturers who control both the substrate specification and the assembly process. For these buyers, the value of the asset is primarily defensive and reliability-enabling: it provides freedom to integrate NEG getter layers into their glass-core packages without creating exposure to third-party composition claims, and it potentially supports licensing revenue if the integration architecture becomes standard across the industry. A secondary buyer class is the NEG getter material vendor community itself. A company like a specialized thin-film getter supplier that is developing PVD-deposited getter targets for the advanced substrate market would have direct commercial interest in owning or licensing composition-plus-use claims that cover their product in the intended application context. For that buyer, the asset functions as a product-use patent that converts a commodity material sale into a differentiated, IP-backed solution for glass-core customers. The portfolio's cooperative claim structure — tying the getter to the dielectric film environment — also makes this asset more attractive to substrate-focused acquirers than a standalone getter composition patent would be, because it is structurally aligned with the broader portfolio rather than being an isolated composition claim.

The primary technical risk is activation-temperature compatibility: Zr2Fe and Ti3Al intermetallics require thermal activation (typically 300–500°C depending on composition and surface oxide state) to reach full sorption capacity, and that thermal budget may be incompatible with the seal-cure process for certain glass-core architectures or with the temperature tolerance of already-assembled package layers. If the activation bake cannot be performed after sealing without damaging other package components, the getter layer either enters service partially activated or requires a pre-sealing activation step that limits its effective sorption capacity for post-seal contaminants. This risk is not unique to this composition set — it applies to any reactive-metal NEG — but it is a real design constraint that must be characterized in the helium fine-leak and sorption coupon validation. The presence of Ce2O3 in the composition set is partly a hedge against this risk, as oxide-based scavengers can be active without a high-temperature activation step. The commercial risk is scale and timing: the glass-core substrate market is still in early adoption, and the $200–500 million TAM estimate reflects the current pilot-line volumes rather than a mature market. If glass-core adoption is slower than the packaging industry roadmaps suggest, the licensing opportunity for this asset may be several years out. The backup status of the asset within its own family is also a commercial consideration: in a portfolio sale or licensing negotiation, backup assets typically contribute supporting value rather than lead value, and the pricing of this asset should reflect its role as a defense-and-breadth layer rather than as a primary revenue driver. The clear path to de-risking the commercial uncertainty is tracking the glass-core substrate qualification milestones at the major packaging houses and timing licensing conversations to coincide with the process-specification phase of those qualification programs.