Disclosed herein is a process for assembling an integrated circuit, as well as the assembly resulting from the process, employing a surface treatment of bondpad surfaces. In one aspect, a method of assembling an integrated circuit includes providing a substrate having electrical terminals on a first side of the substrate and a bondpad on a second side of the substrate opposing the first side. In this embodiment, the bondpad is electrically coupled to at least one of the terminals on the first side. In addition, the method includes mounting an integrated circuit chip to the first side of the substrate, where the integrated circuit component has a lead adapted to be wire-bonded to the terminal. The method further includes removing oxidation from the bondpad, where the bondpad is adapted to be metallurgically bonded to a trace on a printed circuit board. Moreover, this embodiment of the method includes metallurgically bonding the bondpad to the trace.