Freescale Ships Its Billionth Component Integrating Copper Wire Assembly Technology
The company now ships more devices with copper wire than gold.
AUSTIN, Texas – Only two years after launching an ambitious initiative to expand and promote the industry-wide utilization of copper wire assembly technology, Freescale Semiconductor has shipped its billionth copper wire component.
Freescale final manufacturing sites in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Tianjin, China today produce more components in technically superior copper wire bonding at excellent quality levels than in traditional gold wire. The company anticipates that the vast majority of products manufactured at these sites will utilize copper wire bonding by the end of 2015.
More than 300 million Freescale units have now shipped into automotive applications, many of them in demanding under-the-hood environments. Beginning with an automotive industry event which Freescale hosted in May 2013, focus was placed on accelerating the broad adoption of copper wire technology. Involving Freescale customers and their suppliers, key distributors and renowned industry experts, the gathering resulted in comprehensive work plans and close collaborations which, just 24 months later, contributed greatly to Freescale’s delivery of its billionth copper wire device.
“Freescale has always been about challenging the status quo and taking the lead on matters of importance to the larger semiconductor industry,” said Glenn Daves, Freescale’s director of Packaging and Board Solutions. “Our remarkable progress in making the move to copper is yet another demonstration of how Freescale, its customers and partners drive innovation.”
Freescale’s copper wire packages deliver higher reliability and better electrical and thermal performance than equivalent gold wire packages. In addition, in terms of production quality, copper wire products perform today at Freescale two times better than traditional gold wire parts, with copper wire defectivity rates of only approximately 20 parts per billion.
In addition to technology benefits, copper wire helps improve security of supply for customers, as the higher internal production quantity is now in copper, and more wafer fabs are qualified with copper than gold wire. Customers reaping the benefits of Freescale’s copper bonding technology span a wide range of industries and applications, from safety-critical solutions for the quality-stringent automotive market, to consumer electronics and high performance networking equipment.
About Freescale Semiconductor
Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL) enables secure, embedded processing solutions for the Internet of Tomorrow. Freescale’s solutions drive a more innovative and connected world, simplifying our lives and making us safer. While serving the world’s largest companies, Freescale is also committed to supporting science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, enabling the next generation of innovators.www.freescale.com.
