Application of a Force Sensor in Wire Bonding Process

Wire bonder is important equipment in semiconductor end-package. The benefits of using force sensor are precisely force control and earlier contact detection. In this paper, we introduced an application of a force sensor in the wire bonding process. We proposed the control strategy of the whole bonding process with the force sensor. In the bonding process, it's very important to make sure the safety before switching between the force control and position control. A contact detection method in force mode was introduced to get a smooth switch from position control to force control. Before switching from the force control to position control, a two-steps method was proposed to prevent vibrations. The experiments results show that a good bonding performance was achieved by applying with the force sensor.