Abstract

The work described in this paper was carried out as an ESTEC Development Contract to study die attachment, wire bonding and packaging of gallium arsenide devices. A low mass and volume hermetic package suitable for single or multichip packaging was identified, and the mounting and wire bonding carried out within this package. The obiective of this work was to evaluate conductive epoxy resin die mounting and lid sealing, compare it with eutectic methods and to find if reliable thermosonic bonds could be made to devices without damaging the underlying material. All test pieces were subjected to long term high temperature storage, environmental or mechanical stress. Bond strengths and visual appearance were examined before and after stress testing together with particular requirements such as hermeticity of sealed packages. It was found that devices could be satisfactorily mounted in the packages using conductive epoxy resins, reliable thermosonic bonds made to the die without damaging the underlying material, and the package hermetically sealed using a conductive epoxy resin.