Newly developed high reliability palladium coated Cu wire for automotive application

In the past several years, Au bonding wire has been replaced with Cu wire in the field of LSI devices. In particular, Pd coated copper (PCC) and Au-Pd coated copper (APC) wire are the majority of the market share. Recently, a shift from Au wire to Cu wire is also expected for automotive devices. In order to apply Cu wire to automotive devices, high bond reliability is required under harsh environment. Especially, high temperature is a major concern to design and manage long term reliability. A new type of APC (new-APC) wire was developed to have better thermal reliability than bare Cu and conventional APC wire. New-APC wire has higher concentration of added element than APC wire. Furthermore, the new-APC wire has good bond properties similar to APC wire.