Roberto Gilardoni, process engineer at Hesse & Knipps Inc., will present a paper on “Ribbon Bonding for High Frequency Applications: Advantages of Ribbon Bonding and the Impact on the Microwave Industry” at the International Microwave Symposium to be held in Atlanta, GA, from June 15–20. The presentation will discuss the advantages of the electrical properties, mechanical and geometrical properties of ribbon bonding vs. wire bonding in the interconnection of high frequency electronics.

This is an important topic of interest to the microwave market as ribbon bonding continues to receive more widespread attention as an alternative to wire bonding with the increasing frequencies of electronics in all fields of information technology and the availability of fully automatic ribbon bonders that can cost effectively address the requirements of these packages. While ribbon bonding has been popular in high frequency electronics for a long time, fully automatic ribbon bonders with sufficient specification properties to justify cost of ownership have not been available until a few years ago.

The increasing price of gold in the electronics manufacturing market is also adding momentum to the move to alternative interconnect technology that require less gold volume. Gilardoni’s paper goes into depth about how high frequency electronic packages could be produced at lower material costs but with the same electrical performance using ribbon technology. He also discusses the requirements for ribbon bonding, detailing that the differences between ribbon wedge bonders lies hidden in the bond head technology.