TY - JOUR
T1 - MEMS Vertical Probe Cards With Ultra Densely Arrayed Metal Probes for Wafer-Level IC Testing
AU - Wang, Fei
AU - Cheng, Rong
AU - Li, Xinxin
N1 - Copyright 2009 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - We have developed a MEMS probe-card technology for wafer-level testing ICs with 1-D line-arrayed or 2-D area-arrayed dense pads layouts. With a novel metal MEMS fabrication technique, an area-arrayed tip matrix is realized with an ultrad-ense tip pitch of 90 mu m x 196 mu m for testing 2-D pad layout, and a 50-mu m minimum pitch is also achieved in line-arrayed probe cards for testing line-on-center or line-on-perimeter wafers. By using the anisotropic etching properties of single-crystalline silicon, novel oblique concave cavities are formed as electroplating moulds for the area-arrayed microprobes. With the micromachined cavity moulds, the probes are firstly electroplated in a silicon wafer and further flip-chip packaged onto a low-temperature cofired ceramic board for signal feeding to an automatic testing equipment. The microprobes can be efficiently released using a silicon-loss technique with a lateral underneath etching. The measured material properties of the electroplated nickel and the Sn-Ag solder bump are promising for IC testing applications. Mechanical tests have verified that the microprobes can withstand a 65-mN probing force, while the tip displacement is 25 mu m, and can reliably work for more than 100 000 touchdowns. The electric test shows that the probe array can provide a low contact resistance of below 1 Omega, while the current leakage is only 150 pA at 3.3 V for adjacent probes.
AB - We have developed a MEMS probe-card technology for wafer-level testing ICs with 1-D line-arrayed or 2-D area-arrayed dense pads layouts. With a novel metal MEMS fabrication technique, an area-arrayed tip matrix is realized with an ultrad-ense tip pitch of 90 mu m x 196 mu m for testing 2-D pad layout, and a 50-mu m minimum pitch is also achieved in line-arrayed probe cards for testing line-on-center or line-on-perimeter wafers. By using the anisotropic etching properties of single-crystalline silicon, novel oblique concave cavities are formed as electroplating moulds for the area-arrayed microprobes. With the micromachined cavity moulds, the probes are firstly electroplated in a silicon wafer and further flip-chip packaged onto a low-temperature cofired ceramic board for signal feeding to an automatic testing equipment. The microprobes can be efficiently released using a silicon-loss technique with a lateral underneath etching. The measured material properties of the electroplated nickel and the Sn-Ag solder bump are promising for IC testing applications. Mechanical tests have verified that the microprobes can withstand a 65-mN probing force, while the tip displacement is 25 mu m, and can reliably work for more than 100 000 touchdowns. The electric test shows that the probe array can provide a low contact resistance of below 1 Omega, while the current leakage is only 150 pA at 3.3 V for adjacent probes.
U2 - 10.1109/JMEMS.2009.2021815
DO - 10.1109/JMEMS.2009.2021815
M3 - Journal article
VL - 18
SP - 933
EP - 941
JO - I E E E Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems
JF - I E E E Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems
SN - 1057-7157
IS - 4
ER -