Low-Contact Resistance Probe Card Using MEMS Technology

Multichannel die probing increases test speed and lowers the overall cost of testing. A new high-density wafer probe card based on MEMS technology is presented in this paper. MEMS-based microtest-channels have been designed to establish high-speed low-resistance connectivity between the die-under-test and the tester at the wafer level. The proposed test scheme can be used to probe fine pitch pads and interconnects of a new generation of 3-D integrated circuits. The proposed MEMS probe, which is fabricated with two masks, supports (10^{6}) lifetime touchdowns. Measurement results using a prototype indicate that the proposed architecture can be used to conduct manufacturing tests up to 38.6 GHz with less than -1-dB insertion loss while maintaining 11.4-m(Omega ) contact resistance. The measured return loss of the probe at 39.6 GHz is -12.05 dB.