Wire Bond Pull Testing – Not a “Random” Process for Us
December 2022
Wire Bond Pull Testing is not a random thought process here at Texas Microelectronics Corporation.
Pull Testing is a very time consuming process. The purpose of Pull Testing is to verify the integrity of bond wire connection strength to the die pad, and or the substrate trace or package Leadframe. The process includes moving a very tiny hook under the high point of a single wire bond, then applying a 3 gram nondestructive upward pull force (for standard Mil Spec-883 ND testing). Once this cycle is completed for a single wire, the operator moves the Device Under Test (DUT) to position the hook under the very next bond wire.
From a time and labor standpoint, can you imagine doing the Pull Test process on the device below?
This device obviously contains hundreds of wire bonds, some Gold and some Aluminum. The Pull Test process is highly time consuming and tedious.
Most companies manufacturing monolithic or multichip microelectronics assemblies use a Pull Test process that is a statistical sampling analysis, meaning they Pull Test only a certain percentage of the wires in each device, or – only a certain percentage of the devices in the manufacturing Lot, to verify the Wire Bonding process.
Here at Texas Microelectronics Corporation we have not and will not ever use a statistical sampling method for Wire Bond Pull testing
Texas Microelectronics Pull Tests 100% of the wires, on 100% of the devices we produce.
The reason we do this is because the high-reliability industries we serve, Oil & Gas, Aerial Drone, Aerospace, Defense, require the highest level of quality and reliability that can be produced. A single failure is not acceptable for these industries.
During our over 30 years of operation we have had a few companies ask us to utilize statistical sampling for Wire Bond Pull Test in order to reduce their cost, to which we consistently decline such a request. Our name and logo is on each and every device, and as such, so is our reputation.
Texas Microelectronics Corporation has spent the last 30+ years ensuring that our name is synonymous with absolute quality in the microelectronics industry. We will continue to maintain that reputation, in part, by continuing with our 100% Wire Bond Pull Testing process.
Greg Haug