Wire bond causes electrical overstress [BGA package example]

Electrical overstress causing burnt/melt metallization is a common failure in microelectronics circuits. It can occur in the manufacturing process or at the end user. For this type of failure, most of the times, it is due to the transient voltage or surge in current spiking at the auto test equipment (ATE) or test handler grounding. It could also be a faulty application at the customer. To nail down the problem, we need to investigate the whole manufacturing process from assembly to the final electrical testing of the devices. In this paper, the failing device was an enhanced plastic ball gate array (EPBGA) package with about 500 bonding wires. We isolated the culprit to the wire bond process via a problem solving methodology and experimental final verification.