Process advantages of thermosonic wedge-wedge bonding using dosed tool heating

Thermosonic wire bonding has a number of advantages over “cold” ultrasonic wire bonding. Despite these potential advantages, it is rarely used besides ball-wedge and gold wedge-wedge applications, mostly due to the drawbacks and limitations of available heating technology. A recently introduced novel thermosonic process using a laser-heated bonding tool avoids most of these drawbacks. This contribution presents the results of two series of bonding tests which have used this novel process to bond aluminium and copper heavy wire to sheets of the same metal. The bond test results prove that thermosonic wedge-wedge bonding with a laser-heated tool has a number of significant advantages in both aluminium and copper wire bonding. It can be used to reduce the process time, to decrease the mechanical stress in the substrate by reducing ultrasound vibration amplitude and/or normal force, and to increase bond strength. These advantages are the same as in classic thermosonic wire bonding, but without the major disadvantage of having to heat to whole package. Because of the high thermal conductivity and capacity of the investigated metal sheet substrates, the observed positive effects of a heated tool are expected to be significantly higher on real-world substrates such as power semiconductors.

Modeling and Experimental Study of a Wire Clamp for Wire Bonding

A wire clamp is used to grip a gold wire with in 1–2 ms during thermosonic wire bonding. Modern wire bonders require faster and larger opening wire clamps. In order to simplify the design process and find the key parameters affecting the opening of wire clamps, a model analysis based on energy conservation was developed. The relation between geometric parameters and the amplification ratio was obtained. A finite element (FE) model was also developed in order to calculate the amplification ratio and natural frequency. Experiments were carried out in order to confirm the results of these models. Model studies show that the arm length was the major factor affecting the opening of the wire clamp.