Posts Tagged ‘Electronics’
-
March 10th, 2010
SEMICON China
World Gold Council, is helping to train engineers and chip designers in the technology of wire bonding. At next week’s SEMICON China 2010 we are sponsoring a seminar entitled ‘Materials Science of Wire Bonding & Wire Bond Reliability’ in conjunction with SEMI. This will include best practice in wire bonding technology and materials selection issues. To register for this seminar please click here.
-
February 22nd, 2010
Gold Demand Trends
Last week saw the release of WGC’s Gold Demand Trends publication reporting on gold demand for Q4 2009. In the fourth quarter, gold demand for industrial and dental applications recorded its third consecutive quarter-onquarter improvement and its first annual gain in more than two years. Demand totalled 99.7 tonnes, 11% higher than the fourth quarter of 2008. Nevertheless, demand in 2009 was down 16% on 2008 levels. Electronics demand, which for most of the last 18 months has been a severe casualty of the global economic crisis, rebounded strongly in Q4, jumping 25% relative to year earlier levels in a very positive indication that restocking of inventory is taking place on the back of a more optimistic economic outlook. Read more here.
-
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?”
-
January 4th, 2010
Materials science of wire bonding
Wire bonding remains the most important interconnection technology in semiconductor packaging. It also happens to be the single largest industrial use of gold. Whilst lots has been written about the wire bonding process itself, much less has been written about the materials science of the technology. This latest paper in Microelectronics Reliability by Chris Breach and Frank Wulff takes a look at this area, including how the reliability of the ball bonding process is affected by selection of gold or copper wire. -
December 7th, 2009
Paying for electronics recycling
Reading The Times on the way to work this morning, I was intrigued by a story (‘Redundant meters offer a harvest of precious metals’) about how Britian’s utility companies are starting to replace gas and electricity meters in people’s homes. This is so that new ’smart meters’ can be installed.What’s interesting from a gold perspective, is that there are 26 million electricity meters and 21 million gas meters to be replaced and each one contains about 0.01g of gold. So that’s well over £10 million of gold that can be reclaimed from this obsolete eletrical equipment and used to cover the cost of recycling. This is a really important point – not just in this particular example, but in the wider recycling of waste electronics like computers and mobiles phones. The recycling of gold from waste electronic materials is a critical component of the economic driver for recycling. Gold represents 65% of the value of typical PC-circuit board waste and 67% of the value of end-of-life mobile phones (‘Improving metal returns and eco-efficiency in electronics recycling’ Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment). I hope the story in The Times, helps to highlight the unique role gold plays in the electronics recycling industry…..
-
October 9th, 2009
SEMICON Europa 2009
This week I’ve been at SEMICON Europa as part of World Gold Council’s programme to support gold’s use in the electronics industry. I want to quickly mention one area that, although not part of our programme, does provide some rather visually stunning uses of gold; epitaxy reactor reflectors. These parts, a key component in semiconductor manufacturing, were exhibited by Gold Tech Industries. Unfortuantely I didn’t have my camera to capture an image but you can see one example part here!
The technical basis for heat control using gold coatings (the principle under-pinning the above application) was described some years ago in this Gold Bulletin paper.
-
October 1st, 2009
Better outlook for electronics demand
More than one electronics industry analyst is suggesting the outlook for the semiconductor industry is better than it has been for some time. IC Insights, iSuppli and SEMI have all made positive comments on this topic in the last couple of weeks. When this will feed through into increased gold bonding wire demand is not yet clear…. -
September 23rd, 2009
Lead-free packaging with gold inks?
This open access paper published in the Journal of Electronic Materials investigated gold nanoparticle inks as potential candidates for lead-free packaging applications. The main advantage of the inks are the very low melting points, good conductivity compared to eutectic solders and excellent thermal stability/electromigration resistance. -
September 11th, 2009
New PCB finishes
The demand for improved multifunctional, high reliability printed circuit board (PCB) finishes is growing. Another product has been added to the market; Dow Electronic Materials has just announced its latest offering -Aurolectroless™ SMT immersion gold for ASIG (autocatalytic silver immersion gold) final finish process.Gold wire bonding is claimed to show exceptional bond strengths when using the complete ASIG process
-
September 4th, 2009
IBM growing nanowires
Nice story this week in the New York Times about IBM’s research on silicon nanowires grown using gold nanoparticles….
[IBM published some lovely work a year or so ago using gold nanoparticles for printing (here)]
Richard Holliday
Recent comments: