Electrothermal simulation of bonding wire degradation under uncertain geometries

In this paper, electrothermal field phenomena in electronic components are considered. This coupling is tackled by multiphysical field simulations using the Finite Integration Technique (FIT). In particular, the design of bonding wires with respect to thermal degradation is investigated. Instead of resolving the wires by the computational grid, lumped element representations are introduced as point-to-point connections in the spatially distributed model. Fabrication tolerances lead to uncertainties of the wires' parameters and influence the operation and reliability of the final product. Based on geometric measurements, the resulting variability of the wire temperatures is determined using the stochastic electrothermal field-circuit model.