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News Article

Gold tipped to bond

News
World gold council seminar on wire bonding expressed copper concerns

Feedback from the World Gold Council (WGC) sponsored seminar entitled ‘Materials Science of Wire Bonding & Wire Bond Reliability' held in conjunction with SEMI at SEMICON China 2010 and CSTIC Conference in March has confirmed industry concerns with copper bonding wire.    The seminar aimed to educate and inform engineers about the cost-effective use of gold in semiconductor packaging and was attended by leading companies in the semiconductor supply chain.  This seminar provided useful and factual information about gold in the bonding wire process to help the industry understand how gold can still be viewed as a cost effective choice in many applications and how gold's inherent material properties are best suited to the wire bonding process

Richard Holliday, Director, Industrial at World Gold Council, says: "Feedback from the participants at the seminar backs up results from the SEMI survey released in January1, which showed that the semiconductor industry still has doubts about the reliability of copper bonding wire versus gold.  About 50% of the attendees at the event have encountered problems with copper wire bonding in production, including low production yields. Instead of switching to copper many are looking to reduce gold costs through wire diameter reduction or other design changes as the preferred strategy to cost management.

"This seminar was a great success.  The attendees thought it was a really valuable and informative event which improved their understanding of material selection issues. It is clear that wire suppliers need to assist their customers to reduce the impact of metal price on the overall cost of gold bonding wire technology, whilst maintaining the inherent reliability of gold. Solutions include reducing the overall length of gold wire through optimisation of loop height, reduction in wire diameter and design changes to minimise wire usage."

WGC is planning to hold additional seminars throughout the year as part of its global campaign to educate and inform engineers about the cost-effective use of gold wire bonding in semiconductor packaging. Bonding wire is used to make the electrical connection or interconnection between the semiconductor component (die) and the package. Whilst some chip packages eliminate the need for bonding wire, evolution of bonding wire technology has maintained the position of bonding wire as the main interconnection technology. Despite the cost of the raw material, gold is the most common bonding wire material because it is by far the easiest and fastest wire to use in production. According to SEMI it represents almost 90% of the worldwide bonding wire by volume.

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