A gold bonding wire fabrication method, which includes the steps of (a) drawing a non-gold wire rod, for example, a pure silver wire rod or pure palladium wire rod into a core wire of thickness within about 1 .mu.m.about.500 .mu.m, (b) electroplating the core wire with a layer of gold plating of thickness within about 0.025 .mu.m.about.25 .mu.m.
In a process for manufacturing a conductive wire that is suitable for use in semiconductor packages, a core wire of an extensible metal other than gold is first prepared to have a diameter ranging from 300 .mu.m to 500 .mu.m. Thereafter, a gold-containing outer layer having a thickness ranging from 2.5 .mu.m to 25 .mu.m is plated onto an outer surface of the core wire so as to form a gold-plated core wire. Subsequently, the gold-plated core wire is drawn to result in the conductive wire having a diameter ranging from 1 .mu.m to 50 .mu.m.
A gold wire having a non-pure gold core member and a layer of pure gold coating covering the non-pure gold core member. The fabrication method of the gold wire includes the procedures of (1) selecting a non-pure gold wire rod, (2) gold-plating the non-pure gold wire rod with a layer of pure gold coating of thickness about 10.about.100 .mu.in, (3) drawing the pure gold-coated wire rod into a gold wire of thickness about 40.about.4000 .mu.in, (4) examining the material properties of the gold wire so as to obtained the desired finished product.
