Modern manufacturers have to deal with both SMT and Micro-E services because assemblies require mixed interconnect technologies. The application, required processes, thermal considerations, and particular board all must be considered.

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‐SOE power transistors are traditionally wire bonded using gold wedge bonders to create strings of loops with each‐loop‐stitch‐loop‐stitch‐loop‐stitch … is demonstrated as a more

loop in the chain having specific length and height requirements.

A ball bond technology (chain bonding) to create a ball

cost effective alternative to these traditional wedge bond solutions.

Initial chain bonding using a ball bonder produced comparable performance as a wedge bonded solution, but used

more prevalent ball bonding technology to reduce interconnect cost of ownership.

RF

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Over the years, microelectronic wire bond process and packaging engineers have debated whether to use ball- or wedge-bond technologies. This has been especially true with RF designs and fine-pitch packaging. There is little debate that ball bonding is faster and more robust; however, due to a need for low-profile interconnects or fine pitch, wedge has continued to dominate key market segments. Another area where wedge bonding typically dominates is when a running stitch interconnect or die-to-die bonding is required. These demands have recently multiplied as advanced LED designs mature.

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Fiber Alignment and Attach. The final assembly step of a laser diode is the alignment and attach of an optical fiber. The intrinsic
variability of both the diode optical output and the optical center of the fiber require the fiber to be actively aligned. During active alignment, the position of the fiber relative to the diode is adjusted as a function of the output power (positioned for maximum throughput power). To optimize coupling efficiency of single-mode devices, the final alignment must be made to within 0.1μm of the actual peak, post-attach. Attach methodologies include laser weld, solder or epoxy. Depending on the specific device and attach process, a post-attach correction may be required to maximize the power output of the device.

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Solid State Lighting is pervasive and will continue to
grow in popularity as performance and costs mature.  Products include camera phone flashes, televisions, display backlighting, automotive lighting, medical products, architectural lighting, projectors, and others still in development. Reaching performance and cost targets will require continuous improvements in LED devices and packaging to extract ever increasing lumens per watt. Several new products use a matrix of LED devices packaged together. These matrix LED packages present challenges for both die attach and wire bonding compared to single die packages.

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Wire bonding is a means of first-level interconnect, which is the initial interconnection to the actual die surface or the logicon a device. This interconnect takes that logic, or the power of the chip and connects it to the outside world.

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With manufacturing costs and new technology demands on the rise, disk drive manufacturers are developing advanced manufacturing methods in order to stay competitive. Manufactured in very high volumes, hard disk drive suspensions currently use either a manual bonding process (bump, wire, or TAB) or a manual soldering process (reflow) to make the electrical connection. Both methods are capital intensive, consume expensive cleanroom floorspace, and result in low productivity and yield loss.

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With the increased levels of complexity and spiraling costs in manufacturing, hybrid and MCM manufacturers are increasingly turning to the use of automated assembly lines to integrate several of the component placement, wire bonding and accessory steps.

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Light-emitting diode (LED)-based applications are growing, and cover a broad range of markets including automotive lighting applications such as indicators, spot utility, and headlamps;
camera functions like display backlights and camera flashes; consumer products such as LCD display backlight and projection systems; architectural uses like accent lighting for buildings, and signs; and many

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Mobile electronic products continually require finer geometries for packaged integrated circuits. Wireless phones, PDA, and digital cameras continue to merge into a common device that will benefit from finer pitch and lower profile wire bonding or ball bumping for flip chip, stacked chip, and other advanced packaging technologies.  Inherent variations in materials, tools, and process can cause variations in ball shape and size, stitch shape, bond quality, and thus yield. This paper will present Adaptive Bond Deformation™, a method recently developed to control the geometry of both ball and stitch according to process parameter inputs supplied by the user. This technique adapts to normal
variations in bond surface, bond tool coupling, part fixture, and other difficult-to-measure influences to produce bonded ball bumps and stitches with significant improvement in geometry consistency with similar or better results for ball shear and pull strength when compared to non-adaptive bonding.

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