Influence of fluorine contamination on semiconductor wafer probing

Probing over active area (POAA) is gaining more influence in modern semiconductor production. Because of the existing bonding technology aluminum is still used as last metal layer. Whereas it is assumed that the problems during probing are mainly caused by the native aluminum oxide on the pad surface we will show, that other contaminations must be considered as well, especially fluorine. A possible cleaning step to improve the probing performance will be shown and discussed.