SEMICONDUCTOR & THIN FILM COATING DIVISION

The widespread acceptance of wireless communication devices in recent years has led to a boom for manufacturers of III-V Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMICs). As a result, these device fabricators have needed to adopt a significant amount of technology from leading silicon device makers in order to provide timely responses to the large demand for […]

Electroplating is a general name for processes that create a metal coating on a solid substrate through the reduction of cations of that metal by means of a direct electric current. The part to be coated acts as the cathode (negative electrode) of an electrolytic cell; the electrolyte is a solution of a salt of

There are literally hundreds of solder alloys available from very low melting points from 38°C to extremely high brazing melting points to over 1000°C. Yet, there is one alloy in particular that stands out and is most commonly used by the majority of users for die attach and lid seal applications. This alloy is gold-tin

Plasma Ashing Process In semiconductor manufacturing plasma ashing is the process of removing the photoresist (light-sensitive coating) from a wafer. Using a plasma source, a monatomic (single atom) substance known as a reactive species is generated. Oxygen or fluorine is the most common reactive species. The reactive species combines with the photoresist to form ash

Today, in the majority of high production soldering of electronic component applications, belt furnaces are used.  The typical length of a belt furnace exceeds 20 feet. Some of these high volume production processes require <200 ppm oxygen level, a nitrogen flush (to achieve such a low ppm oxygen level) and constant “power on” that keeps

The reason that I chose to discuss wire bond pull testing after examining shear testing is that, in concurrence with the development process of a wire bond, we perform pull testing only after shear testing has been performed. The destructive pull test is explicitly what it sounds like. A wire bond loop is pulled until

 a)  Advantages – Prevents wire shorts and enables cross bonding. – Uses existing platforms and lowest-cost packaging infrastructure (wire bonding). – Is suitable for multi-row, ultra fine pitch and area array wire bonding. – Is suitable for systems in package, stacked dies and side-by-side chip-to chip bonding. – Enables flexible routing, simplified substrate and packaging of

Advantages Quasi room-temperature process The wedge wire bonding processes do not require external thermal energy. In contrast to other methods like resistance welding, soldering or laser welding, the substrate to be bonded does not need to be heated nor does the wedge bond process induce heating. During the wedge bonding process, very localized heating occurs

Let us take a look at some of the recent applications, such as opto-electronics and stacked die packaging where wire bonding has been used. By understanding the demands made by these new packaging applications, one can appreciate the criticality of understanding the wire bonding technology and its importance in the “food chain” of microchip manufacturing

As new high-speed products with ever-increasing capabilities are developed and introduced into the market, new advanced IC packaging designs and methods also must be developed to meet these new products’ requirements. New advanced packages are being designed to maximize I/O numbers, minimize wire bond loop length, and provide System-In-Package (SiP) performance. Stacked die packages, providing (SiP) performance, are already the mainstream of cellular phone manufacturing. Wire bonded Lead-On-Chip (LOC, FBGA)