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.