Alexander Coucoulas

Coucoulas retired from AT&T Bell Labs as a member of the technical staff in 1996 where he pioneered research in the areas of electronic/photonics packaging, laser technology and optical fibers which resulted in numerous patents, and publications.

His single-parent father, Demetrios (James) Koukoulas (as a maimed Smyrnaean Greek soldier), was rescued from the coastal waters of the Aegean sea by a Japanese naval cruiser while in view and during the devastating fire of Smyrna in September 1922.

The Japanese cruiser brought him to Pereaus, Greece where he immigrated to The United States via Ellis Island on the SS King Alexander in November of that same year.

[10][11] Coucoulas is a native New Yorker who served in the US Army as a combat engineer in the Far East Command in the early 1950s, and was awarded the National Defense Service Medal for the Korean War (1950-1954).

He observed that the ultrasonic energy and pressures levels needed to sufficiently deform the wire and form the required contact areas significantly increased the incidents of cracks in the glass or silicon chip substrates.

The proven reliability of thermosonic bonding has made it the process of choice, since such potential failure modes could be costly whether they occur during the manufacturing stage or detected later, during an operational field-failure of a micro-chip which had been permanently connected inside a computer or a myriad of other electronic devices.

Burmeister et al., of Hamburg University, Germany, reported that using solely ultrasonic power to bond gold wires to YBa2Cu3O7 microstructures, such as microbridges, Josephson junctions and superconducting interference devices (DC SQUIDS) can degrade them.

The proven reliability of thermosonic bonding has made it the process of choice, since such potential failure modes could be costly whether they occur during the manufacturing stage or detected later, during an operational field-failure of a chip which had been connected inside a computer or a myriad of other microelectronic devices.

An investigation was made of factors affecting a costly brittleness condition known as "sandiness" which occurred in manufactured blocks of dry ice (polycrystalline solid carbon dioxide).