Combination of packaging technology expertise and manufacturing strength bring performance, reliability and cost advantages over gold wire

DALLAS, May 23, 2012 — (PRNewswire) — �Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ: TXN) (TI) today announced it has shipped nearly 6.5 billion units of copper wire bonding technology in its analog, embedded processing and wireless products. This milestone underscores TI's confidence in copper as a viable replacement to gold in its semiconductor product roadmaps, and the electronics industry's acceptance of the technology, due to performance, quality and reliability benefits for a range of applications.  

"While the rising and fluctuating cost of gold was an original driver for making the switch to copper, the technology's overall advantages today are undeniable," said Devan Iyer, director of Semiconductor Packaging in TI's Technology & Manufacturing Group. "Copper wire bonding is delivering a performance boost to customers, and through TI's flexible internal and external manufacturing, we are able to deliver production at the same or higher levels than gold."

Wire bonding technology connects the silicon die pads and semiconductor package leads with thin wires. TI was an early leader in the pursuit, development and implementation of copper wire bonding technology as an alternative to gold. After several years of research, development and product qualifications, TI proved that copper wire bonding is a high volume production process across a wide variety of products with equal or better manufacturability compared to gold, and TI's customers have benefitted from its differentiation. Copper provides superior electrical performance with 40 percent higher electrical conductivity, resulting in lower operating resistance. This, in turn, improves overall product performance in high-speed digital, high-current mixed signal, and power management applications.

TI began shipping copper wire in its products in 2008, making the company an industry leader in broad fan-out of the technology. Today, all seven of TI's assembly and test (A/T) sites are running copper wire bonding production across a range of products and package types, including quad flat no lead (QFN) packages, ball grid array packages such as nFBGA and PBGA; package-on-package (PoP); QFPs; TQFPs; TSSOPs; SOICs; PDIPs and others.

For more information on copper wire bonding benefits and TI's journey to high-volume manufacturing, download the related white paper at www.ti.com/cuwire-pr-wp.

About Packaging at TI

At Texas Instruments, semiconductor packaging is an integral part of the total system that includes design, technology, quality and high-volume manufacturing. Our leadership in packaging is based upon decades of expertise, and is driving advancements in power density, reliability, high performance, low power and cost. TI's broad packaging portfolio supports thousands of diversified products, packaging configurations and technologies to solve customers' problems and enable product differentiation. TI also continues to invest in innovative packaging development and manufacturing in its state-of-the-art facilities around the world. For more information, visit www.ti.com/cuwire-pr-lp

About TI

Texas Instruments semiconductor innovations help 90,000 customers unlock the possibilities of the world as it could be – smarter, safer, greener, healthier and more fun. Our commitment to building a better future is ingrained in everything we do – from the responsible manufacturing of our semiconductors, to caring for our employees, to giving back inside our communities. This is just the beginning of our story. Learn more at www.ti.com

SOURCE Texas Instruments Incorporated

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Texas Instruments Incorporated Tish LeBlanc, Texas Instruments Phone: +1-225-767-3437 Email Contact Melissa Anderson, Texas Instruments Phone: +1-214-404-4828, melissa- Email Contact Web: http://www.ti.com