Improving the cleaning process in copper wire bonding by adapting bonding parameters

Changing manufacturing technologies or material in well-known processes has to be followed by an adaption of process parameters. In case of the transition from aluminum wire to copper wire in heavy wire bonding, the adaption effort is high due to the strongly different mechanical properties of the wire. One of these adaption aspects, apart from wire material, is the existent oxide layers on wire and substrate. The ductile aluminum oxide is not influencing the bonding process much, because it is supposed to break apart in case of plastic deformation. The lubricating copper oxide layer has to be removed before micro welds can develop. Therefore, in this paper, experiments are carried out at low frequency to determine the friction energy needed to abrade the copper oxide layer of wire and substrate, which is indicated by an increase in the resulting friction coefficient. The friction energy per contact area to remove the interfering layers at low frequency is compared to the real bonding process working at 58 kHz. In addition, a theoretical concept is being described to get a grasp of the occurring mechanism. In the end a proposal is given how to set bonding parameters to get the cleanest surfaces with the installed bond tool.