June 29, 2006 – Small Precision Tools and Microbonds Inc. plan to align their technology roadmaps to combine SPT’s advanced wire bonding capillaries with Microbonds’ X-Wire insulated wire bonding technology. Areas to be targeted include stacked die, area array bonding, fine pitch/fine diameter wires, low-k processes, and insulated copper bonding wire.

“The trend to increased I/O density and 3-D packaging and assembly capabilities create increasingly complex multi-tier single die and multi-chip stacked die package designs resulting in significant stresses on bare bonding wire processes,” stated Peter Glutz, president and CEO of SPT Group. “We see insulated bonding wire as a strong enabler for these trends.”