Nippon Steel Materials Licenses Heraeus for Pd Coated Cu Bonding Wire

Nippon Steel Materials, a group company of Nippon Steel to produce advanced materials, and Nippon Micrometal Corporation, a subsidiary of Nippon Steel Materials for semiconductor packaging materials, announced on Tuesday they signed a patent licensing agreement with Heraeus Materials Technology, a leading bonding wire manufacturer in Germany, for a new-type palladium-coated copper bonding wire, named EX1.

Bonding wire is used for LSI packaging while more than 70% of bonding wire material is presently gold. Nippon Steel Materials tries to increase copper bonding wire share by licensing world major bonding wire suppliers including Heraeus and Tanaka Denshi Kogyo. Tanaka Denshi Kogyo was licensed for EX1 production last year.

EX1 price is a seventh of gold bonding wire. Gold bonding wire accounts for a third of LSI packaging cost. If gold bonding wire is replaced with EX1, the packaging cost downs by 20%. Thus copper bonding wire is currently adopted to mobile electronics such as cell phones since the product cycle is very short. The alternation is also expected for power devices and LEDs.

Nippon Micrometal estimates market share of palladium-coated copper bonding wire would expand to 35% in 2014 from present 15%. The total share with bare copper bonding wire could reach 50% from current 25%.

Heraeus is the world second largest supplier of copper bonding wire, next to Nippon Steel Group. Tanaka Denshi Kogyo is the world top supplier of gold bonding wire. By licensing the global top suppliers, copper bonding wire sales may expand speedy and largely.