Wire Bond Technology--The Great Debate: Ball vs. Wedge

Over the years, microelectronic wire bond process and packaging engineers have debated whether to use ball or wedge bond technologies. 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. This paper will present several new techniques, such as chain bonding; a method developed to automatically bond running stitch interconnects using ball bond equipment.