Abstract
Thermosonic ball bonding is a major interconnect process in microelectronics packaging and is positioned to remain one of the key process technologies available to package designers in the near future. However, the main wire material used in fine pitch (FP) and ultra-fine pitch (UFP) ball bonding is gold and with significant increases in gold price, gold ball bonding has become a more costly process that has a considerable economic effect on the assembly of packages used in consumer electronics. An alternative wire material to gold is copper, which is much cheaper and has several technical benefits including better electrical conductivity and has been widely used in discrete and power devices with wire diameters typically larger than 30μm in diameter for many years. However, copper wire behaves quite differently than gold due to its different physical properties, some of which are beneficial and others detrimental to bonding performance. In this article, we briefly review some of the advantages and difficulties with using copper wire advanced packaging and explain why copper cannot replace gold in many applications and why gold offers significant benefits.
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Dr. Christopher Breach owns and manages ProMat Consultants. His expertise is in the areas of polymer physics and physical chemistry, materials characterization, materials science and engineering in microelectronics packaging, intermetallics and interdiffusion, bonding wire (micro-alloy) design. He earned his PhD in physics & physical chemistry of polymer blends (sponsored by the Defence Research Agency) from Brunel University, London. He has held senior management positions in assembly materials for electronics packaging and capital equipment. His postdoctoral research was sponsored by ICI at the Department of Physics, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge on contact mechanics between polymers, polymer interdiffusion (reptation) and the physics of bi-material fracture. He is a Chartered Scientist, Chartered Physicist and Professional Member of the Institute of Physics. He is also a member of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Materials Research Society (MRS) and the Electrochemical Society (ECS).
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Breach, C.D. What is the future of bonding wire? Will copper entirely replace gold?. Gold Bull 43, 150–168 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03214983
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03214983