DETECTION OF FOREIGN PARTICLES DURING WIRE BONDING

A method of bonding wires onto surfaces, an apparatus and a computer program product are disclosed. The method of bonding wires onto surfaces, comprises the steps of: collecting operating characteristics of a bonding tool while forming a wire bond which bonds a wire to a surface; determining whether a possible bonding failure of the wire bond has occurred as indicated by the operating characteristics; and capturing an image of the wire bond to identify whether a foreign body is present on the surface if it is determined that a possible bonding failure has occurred. In this way, imaging of the wire bond is only necessary when the operating characteristics indicate a suspect bonding failure has occurred. This avoids the need to image every bond, while still imaging suspect bonds. This approach helps to significantly increase the throughput of the wire bonding apparatus whilst still identifying and classifying bonding defects due to the presence of a foreign body.