George G. Harman

George G. Harman

George G. Harman

Associated organizations

NASA

Fields of study

Semiconductors

Biography

George G. Harman’s career has been dedicated to understanding, standardizing and improving wire bond technology. His contributions toward transforming a labor-intensive, manual and sometimes unreliable procedure into an automated, reliable process have enabled wire bonding to become the standard for semiconductor interconnections.

Harman developed a 60- to 120-kHz floating-cone capacitor microphone system to plot the ultrasonic vibration modes of bonding tools when the Poseidon strategic missile was experiencing unpredictable wire bond reliability problems. The results of this work were applied toward improving process control and measurement methods and to yield a better understanding of other problems in the ultrasonic bonding machines/processes. He started the ASTM F-01.07 Committee to standardize wire bond testing methods and was responsible for updating these standards in 2006. He also wrote the first version of the nondestructive bond pull test used for MIL-STD-833, which is currently required for most critical space parts used by NASA.

He holds four patents and has won numerous awards. An IEEE Life Fellow, Mr. Harman is currently an NIST Scientist Emeritus and consultant.