In silicon wafer bonding, the initial contact area spreads laterally with a typical speed on the order of 10 mm/s. We observed that this lateral bonding speed increases with decreasing ambient pressure, and is independent of the distance of the contact front to the rim of the wafers and independent of wafer thickness. From these results, we conclude that the lateral bonding speed is mainly determined by pressing the ambient gas out between the two wafers from a very localized area close to the propagating bonding front. ©1995 American Institute of Physics.