Ultrasonic wedge bonding of aluminum (Al) wires is a widely applied interconnect technology for power electronic packaging. The joint quality of the wedge bonding is mainly affected by the process parameters and material properties. Inappropriate process parameters will lead to failure modes such as chip surface pit, metal layer peeling off, wire cracking, non-sticking to the pad, etc., which limits the long-term stability of power devices. In order to reach the desired reliability, the design of experiment (DoE) is generally deployed which is costly in terms of time and related materials. Therefore, simulation-assisted analysis is in demand to rapidly narrow down the process windows. In this paper, an ultrasonic bonding model involving thick Al wires (300 μm) was established based on the Finite Element Method (FEM), to optimize process parameters effectively with reduced time and cost. The model was designed in ANSYS utilizing the transient structural mechanics module with various stresses and ultrasonic power, to simulate the relative deformation of the bonded wires and the displacement against the substrate. The result was then verified by ultrasonic wedge bonding samples with 9 sets of process parameters. The stress distributions were simulated and analyzed with the failure modes of tensile strength tests, while the deformation of wires under various process parameters was measured and compared with shear strength tests. Further, the relationship between the failure modes of the joint and the deformation was then analyzed by Response Surface Method (RSM), and the regression equation of the wire deformation and related process parameters was established and fitted with the actual sample's data. Such analysis not only found the optimum range of the deformation of thick Al ultrasonic wire bonds but also quickly provided a range of optimized processes for Al thick wires applying ultrasonic wedge bonding techniques.

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With the development of 5G communication technology and the rise of power semiconductors, the switching frequency of the circuit keeps increasing, which pushes for miniaturization of power modules and related components. Therefore, in this paper, a one-step molding technology was proposed for a DC/DC buck converter power module. We proposed a method of using Soft Magnetic Powder filled Epoxy (SMPE) adhesive as a molding material to encapsulate a power module, which is a DC/DC buck converter power module contains several passive components, 1 power inductor, and a high-efficiency switching regulator with two integrated N-channel MOSFETs. On the basis of Finite Element Method (FEM), models were firstly established with component level moldings and checked with actual module samples for calibration. Based on the calibrated model, inductors without component level molding were then simulated. SMPE with 4~7μm insulated carbonyl ferrous powder were prepared and measured the magnetic relative permeability. Such material was investigated to pot the whole power module as a one-step molding, instead of separate molding for the power inductor and the power module. After that, thermal analysis and inductance were calculated and compared.@en