Extends copper wire production into high reliability applications including automotive and industrial
Texas Instruments (TI) (NASDAQ: TXN) today announced it has shipped more than 22 billion units of copper wire bonding technology from its internal assembly sites and is now in production for major high reliability applications including automotive and industrial. The majority of TI's existing analog and CMOS silicon technology nodes have been qualified with copper, and all new TI technologies and packages are being developed with copper wire bond. Along with its quality, reliability and cost benefits, copper wire offers equal or better manufacturability compared to gold. It also delivers 40 percent higher electrical conductivity to give customers a boost in overall product performance with a number of TI's analog and embedded processing parts.
"TI has pioneered development of copper wire bonding for high volume production across a broad portfolio of products, factories and technologies," said Jan Vardaman, president and founder of TechSearch International, Inc. "TI was one of the first manufacturers to recognize the many advantages copper wire technology offers a customer. For example, it provides more thermal stability than gold and has superior mechanical properties to increase bond strength."
TI is currently shipping about two billion units of copper wire bond technology each quarter. This includes production for key automotive segments such as safety (e.g., anti-lock brake systems, power steering, stability control), infotainment, body and comfort, and powertrain. Enabling copper wire bond technology for automotive applications requires significant development to automotive standards and strict manufacturing discipline. TI's extensive manufacturability and reliability testing meets automotive industry qualification requirements and includes thorough process corner development, production quality and reliability monitoring, and manufacturing controls.
TI began shipping copper wire in its products in 2008. Today, all of TI's assembly and test (A/T) sites are running copper wire bonding on all TI package types, including BGA, QFN, QFP, TSSOP, SOIC, PDIP and others. Copper is at 71 percent of TI's total wire usage and TI is in production with:
Minimum 30/60 microns staggered bond pad pitch
Up to 1000 wires in BGA packages
Multi-chip stacked die with die to die wire bonding
Minimum 0.8mil copper wire diameter
"Having multiple wire bond capabilities that support a wide range of silicon technologies and product applications is a great benefit to our customers," said Devan Iyer, director of Semiconductor Packaging in TI's Technology & Manufacturing Group. "TI's flexible manufacturing strategy also improves customer delivery and performance for products using copper wire bond. We have a clear capacity advantage, both internally and with qualified subcontractors, that enable us to meet all levels of customer demand."
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