Tanaka Denshi Kogyo Starts Ag Bonding Wire Supply

Tanaka Holdings announced on Monday the group company, Tanaka Denshi Kogyo starts commercial sales of silver bonding wire on June 14. Bonding wire users can reduce precious metal cost by about 80% with the silver bonding wire compared with gold bonding wire as well as ensuring productivity and product reliability as high as gold bonding wire. Presently gold bonding wire is majorly used for semiconductors and LEDs (light emitting diodes).

The silver bonding wire can be used for wide applications including semiconductors and LEDs as an alternate for gold bonding wire. Especially for LEDs for general lighting, the silver bonding wire represents 80% reflectance against 450-495 nanometers light though gold bonding wire represents 50% reflectance. With the silver bonding, LED has high brightness with longer life.

As for semiconductors, copper bonding wire, which is around 90% cheaper than gold bonding wire, is currently used to attach leadframe and IC chip. Meanwhile, melted tip of copper bonding wire generates hard “ball” and sometimes hurts aluminium electrode on IC chip. This problem lowers connectivity, product reliability and productivity.

Tanaka Denshi Kogyo forecasts the silver bonding wire would account for 5% of global bonding wire market in CY2014. The company appeals the product to semiconductor makers and LED makers and targets 150 million yen sales per month.