Kobe Steel Licenses Leadframe Cu Alloy to Wieland

Kobe Steel announced on Thursday the firm licensed production and sales of “Super KFC Series” to Wieland-Werke, German major maker of copper alloy products. Kobe Steel’s Super KFC Series is a copper alloy series for leadframes on which semiconductors are attached for package assembly. Kobe Steel aims to expand the alloy sales for semiconductor related fields in cooperation with Wieland.

Kobe Steel concluded a license contract with Wieland on 31 March for 3 alloys of Super KFC Series. Kobe Steel developed Super KFC Series in 2006.

Copper alloys such as C19400 and C70250 are widely used for IC semiconductor leadframes. Kobe Steel explained these alloys contain considerable amounts of iron, nickel, silicon and other elements to give leadframes strength. These elements sometimes precipitate on surface of copper sheet and adversely affect surface quality.

Super KFC Series represents twice strength compared with Kobe Steel’s popular KFC Series, not increasing amounts of additive elements. With higher strength and lower additives, pretreatment and cleaning processes in leadframe production becomes easier and this contributes to cost saving.

For low pin-count IC semiconductors and discrete semiconductors, Super KFC Series even doesn’t need silver plating process.