A Wirebonding Instrument for Insulated and Coaxial Wires

A tool has been developed that supports a novel microelectronic integration paradigm whereby interconnects between components are directly established by means of microcoax wire bonding. A near-term use case of the tool is to facilitate rapid prototyping of high-bandwidth systems. When further matured, it will be able to rapidly integrate complex systems with hundreds or thousands of interconnects with minimal design time. Automatic stripping and bonding of coax wires having overall diameters between 50 and 100 μm present an array of process challenges that pose interesting demands on the material system of the wire and the bonding tool. This study reviewed a microcoax bonding system that is currently in development at Draper which is able to strip, feed, and bond microcoax wire. The system utilizes a combination of electric flame-off and thermal reflow to strip outer metal shielding and polymer dielectric layers, respectively. It leverages a rotary wire feed mechanism to precisely control wire position so that predetermined wire lengths can be established. Progress in the design of the wires, tooling, and software control architecture is reviewed.