Process control and traceability are essential to the assembly of military and high reliability semiconductor devices. These packaging process elements are largely required due to the end uses of these devices; that is, the expected environment necessitates ruggedness, uncompromising performance, and longevity. In order to match the mandatory criteria, many different automated control and tracking options are available for use during the assembly and packaging process. These methods and techniques will be the focus of this article.

In order to best understand the value of process control and traceability, it will be important to cover several of the common trends for military and aerospace devices; specifically, the technical and market drivers for radar and electronic warfare systems. The market requirements that stem from these drivers will translate into explicit assembly requirements, which in turn will naturally lead to various approaches in meeting those requirements. At this point, concrete process control and traceability techniques for Palomar die bonders and wire bonders will be discussed. Finally, to best showcase the effectiveness of these practices, some example applications in which these techniques are employed will be detailed.

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