Posts Tagged ‘copper’
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February 19th, 2010
Semiconductor Packaging News
Over the last few weeks we kicked-off the debate about gold vs copper bonding wire in semiconductor packaging (see here and here).
Semiconductor Packaging News have just featured this interview with me.
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February 3rd, 2010
Copper wire bonding – do the cost savings add up?
I’ve just received a copy of the new edition of George G. Harman’s book (or ‘bible’) Wire Bonding in Microelectronics. George is widely considered to be the world’s foremost authority on wire bonding. I’d like to quote a passage from the book which is relevant to the ‘gold versus copper’ bonding wire debate (which I blogged on last week).” There is no question copper is a cheaper material but also one that brings new challenges to the bonding engineer. It may be a cost effective process in the eyes of a product manager but when the extra care and attention is required , it is weighed against the existing gold process and then we should ask ourselves, are the net savings worthwhile?”
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June 8th, 2009
The advantages of gold bonding wire
There’s no doubt that the interest in copper wire bonding as a ‘lower’ cost alternative to gold bonding wire for semiconductor packaging is growing. This is not suprising given a) the current gold price and b) the downturn in the semiconductor industry which increases the search for cost saving opportunities. From our work on the topic, we believe the techno-economic benefits of gold are still compelling for the majority of wire bonding applications. We’ll be working hard to demonstrate these benefits over the coming months. In the meantime you can learn more about the wire bonding process at this event during SEMICON West.
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April 22nd, 2009
Wire Bonding Workshop
The use of copper wire – as a replacement for gold wire – in the semiconductor wire bonding process, is a growing trend recently highlighted by both precious metals consultancy GFMS and electronics association SEMI in separate reports. The extent to which this trend continues will depend on a number of factors including the price of gold, improvements to the gold bonding wire process and the ability of the semiconductor supply chain to overcome the remaining technical challenges in using copper wire (eg slower bonding speeds). The very latest on the state of this ‘battle’ can be found at the forthcoming workshop on wire bonding by IMAPS.
Richard Holliday
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