The semiconductor market heavily relies on gold bonding wire, especially for memory devices, and high-end smartcards. With 5G technologies, the need for even more memory is rising. At the same time, manufacturers need cost-efficient material solutions in this highly competitive market. Heraeus AgCoat Prime Gold-Coated Silver Bonding Wire combines the advantages of gold and silver offering an alternative to gold bonding wire for the packaging industry. AgCoat Prime is a silver alloy bonding wire coated with a layer of gold on the exterior.
The market challenge is the gold high price due to its limited resource. However, replacing the gold bonding wire with silver is not ideal, because of its limitation of shorter floor life and the costs of forming gas to form FAB.
“With AgCoat Prime Heraeus has developed the first viable solution to cutting costs while maintaining the comparable quality to gold wire,” says James Kim, Product Manager at Heraeus Electronics. As a leading supplier of bonding wires, Heraeus again leads in providing a new solution for customers in the memory market.
Because AgCoat Prime’s specifications are closely aligned to gold bonding wire, no inert gas is required. This means that manufacturers can use the existing production equipment. AgCoat Prime has a floor life of 60 days enabling longer spool lengths for production efficiency. When looking at IMC growth rates, AgCoat Prime also offers a slower growth rate than gold wires, providing better HTS and TC performance in reliability, as well as no kirkendall voids (Fig.1)
