TI continues shipping copper wire in its products

BANGALORE, INDIA: Nearly 650 crore units of copper wire bonding technology in the analogue, embedded processing and wireless products has been shipped by Texas Instruments (TI).  This shows that TI is confident about copper being a viable replacement to gold in its semiconductor product roadmaps.

"While the rising and fluctuating cost of gold was an original driver for making the switch to copper, the technology's overall advantages today are undeniable. Copper wire bonding is delivering a performance boost to customers, and through TI's flexible internal and external manufacturing, we are able to deliver production at the same or higher levels than gold,” said Devan Iyer, director, semiconductor packaging, TI's Technology & Manufacturing Group.

As per TI, copper provides 40 per cent higher electrical conductivity, resulting in lower operating resistance. This results in improved product performance in high speed digital, high-current mixed signal, and power management applications.

Copper also reduces heat dissipation within a package and is also a superior conductor to gold. It gives offers more thermal stability and better mechanical properties that increase bond strength and wire loop stability during moulding.

TI has seven assembly and test (A/T) sites and they are running copper wire bonding production across a range of products and package types, including quad flat no lead (QFN) packages, ball grid array packages such as nFBGA and PBGA; package-on-package (PoP); QFPs; TQFPs; TSSOPs; SOICs; PDIPs and others. It began shipping copper wire in its products in 2008.