Demand for copper wirebonding packaging to peak in 2014 Ingrid Lee, Taipei; Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES [Thursday 6 September 2012]

Demand for copper wirebonding packaging will remain strong over the next two years, with the packaging technology to account for 85% of the global wirebonding market in 2014, according to equipment supplier Kulicke & Soffa Industries (K&S).

Major IC packagers including Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) and Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL) have been making progress toward the transition from gold to copper wirebonding, as demand coming from both the IC design and IDM sectors continues to grow, said K&S.Logic ICs were the first product segment adopting copper wirebonding technology, K&S indicated. The packaging method has also been increasingly used in the backend manufacture of LEDs, K&S said. Packaging LEDs with copper wirebonding processes might not be able to substantially reduce manufacturing costs, but is able to deliver higher luminous efficacy than that with gold wirebonding processes, K&S noted.

K&S expects to see more IC components, except memory products due to their shorter line lengths, adopt copper wirebonding packaging for mainly cost reasons.K&S currently has an as high as 80% share of the global copper wirebonding equipment market. K&S' share of the Taiwan market segment alone is estimated at almost 100%.