Posts Tagged ‘SEMI’
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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.
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January 29th, 2010
Concerns over shift from gold to copper bonding wire
There has been a lot of media coverage (see here and here for examples) of this week’s announcement of the results of a survey, conducted by SEMI, the global semiconductor industry association, which shows the semiconductor industry has serious reservations about the reliability and yield of copper bonding wire.
This global survey does show that an increasing number of companies are considering using copper for some new products – but the results of this survey show that there are still serious reservations in the industry over the use of copper wire in packaging technology. It is clear that gold has proven reliability and a track record – industry professionals still recognise this. We plan to undertake further research to discover the extent of the difference in reliability of gold versus copper over the coming months……
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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.
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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…. -
May 12th, 2009
SEMI Technology Symposium
The Call for Papers for the SEMI Technology Symposium is now open.
This 28th annual event will be held between 2-4 December at the Makuhari Messe, Chiba, Japan in conjunction with SEMICON Japan 2009. The submission deadline is June 19, 2009. In 2008, the event featured 92 technical lectures, and attracted over 1,098 attendees.
Themes covered by the event will include gold’s use in the semiconductor industry and will interest IC manufacturers, academic and research institutes, equipment manufacturers and materials suppliers. For more information, visit www.semi.org.
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May 7th, 2009
Electronics recovery?
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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.
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March 30th, 2009
Gold Grows Semiconductor Materials Market
SEMI is the US-based industry association serving the manufacturing supply chain for the microelectronics industry. They have just released their 2008 market survey for the semiconductor packaging materials market, which includes the use of gold bonding wire. The market for packaging materials in 2008 was $18.6 billion compared to $17.5 billion for 2007. It was the higher gold metal price in 2008 that contributed to the year-on-year growth in this market.
Richard Holliday
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