August 8, 2011 – Prices for gold have been climbing to near record levels, now at $1700/oz, closing in on the 1980s’ inflation-adjusted peak, and spiking again now thanks to the US credit rating downgrade. And that’s putting more juice behind industry efforts to transition from gold to copper wire for fine-wire applications, notes TechSearch International in a new report.

The new survey sought to determine how much of the market is copper, what the split is between bare and palladium-coated copper (PCC), and how fast the two wire types are growing. Also the company investigated the percentage of PBGA, FBGA (laminate CSP), QFN (leadframe CSP), and stacked-die CSP packages that shipped worldwide with copper wire in 2010, and estimate those numbers for 2011 and 2015. Numbers for 2010 were compiled using package shipments and the percentage of each that used copper for each company. For assemblers, leadframe packages (specifically QFPs) were implemented in copper wire first, with PBGAs starting later.

For many companies, TechSearch determined, 2010 was the first year that copper was implemented in volume production. But the ramp is significant — some companies are forecasting that 30%-50% of all packages will ship with copper wire by the end of 2011, and TechSearch says copper wire shipments will double in 2011.

The full Advanced Packaging Update report also includes an economic update for the semiconductor packaging industry, new developments in QFN packages, and a synopsis of challenges associated with testing wafers with through-silicon vias (TSVs).