Seagate Technology Incorporated

John L Ibele

Lin Zhou

Dale E Egbert

Peter John Gunderson

Huiwen Liu

Joel William Hoehn

Roger L Hipwell

Jeff O'Konski

Leping Li

Mark Allen Herendeen

Pramit P Parikh

Edward Alan Knutson

Kara L Maytag

Saravuth Keo

Joe J Schobel

Ralph Marquart

Kah Choong Loo

Cing Siong Ling

The presently disclosed technology describes systems and methods for attaining a ball bond using less than 1 thousandth of an inch diameter gold wire using ultrasonic bonding energy and without heating an underlying bonding pad. The ball bond allows the use of particularly small bonding pads that are particularly close to adjacent microelectronic structures that limit the use of other bonding techniques that have shallow take-off angles.

Ambient temperature ball bond

A method and associated apparatus for topographically characterizing a workpiece. The workpiece is scanned with a scanning probe along a first directional grid, thereby scanning a reference surface and an area of interest subportion of the reference surface, at a variable pixel density including a first pixel density outside the area of interest and a second pixel density inside the area of interest to derive a first digital file characterizing topography of the workpiece. The workpiece is further scanned along the reference surface and the area of interest with the scanning probe along a second directional grid that is substantially orthogonal to the first directional grid and at a constant pixel density to derive a second digital file characterizing topography of the workpiece. A processor executes computer-readable instructions stored in memory that generate a topographical profile of the workpiece in relation to the first and second digital files.

Variable pixel density imaging

An apparatus and associated method for topographically characterizing a workpiece. A scanning probe obtains topographical data from the workpiece. A processor controls the scanning probe to scan a reference surface of the workpiece to derive a first digital file and to scan a surface of interest that includes at least a portion of the reference surface to derive a second digital file. Correlation pattern recognition logic integrates the first and second digital files together to align the reference surface with the surface of interest.

Scanning probe microscopy employing correlation pattern recognition

Growing community of inventors

Minneapolis, MN, United States of America

John L Ibele