A Review of Palladium Coated Copper Wire Bonding for Automotive Device

The semiconductor package manufacturer has vigorously shifted toward the usage of palladium coated copper (PCC) wire as the substitution of gold (Au) and bare copper (Cu) wire. However, the acceptance of the PCC wire in the automotive industry is hindered by the difficulty to fulfill stringent Automotive Electronics Council (AEC) standard requirements for automotive semiconductor packages. Therefore, it is important for this paper to review the past and recent PCC wire bonding studies related to the automotive semiconductor package in order to gain a better perspective on what changes are needed to improve the performance. The review begins with an insight into the current opportunity and challenge of PCC wire bonding. These are followed by the discussion on the reliability challenges of the PCC wire under AEC Q100 and AEC Q106 standards, with special attention is given to the high temperature storage (HTS) reliability test. Lastly, mechanism and solutions to the galvanic corrosion occurred on the PCC wire bond during HTS test are also been presented