Fully Automatical Test and Qualification System for a High Endurance Embedded EEPROM Module

Qualifying a high temperature, high endurance and high reliability integrated EEPROM process module according the JEDEC and AEC standard needs a large number of tested devices. Correlations of various analog and digital measurements must be done at different supply voltages, temperature conditions and with process variations to ensure a stable high yielding process module. Long program and erase times (milliseconds) for an EEPROM process option result in time consuming measurements. The costs of such a qualification will be comparatively high if all tests are done with production test equipment. Therefore, a test chip concept allowing a wide range of memory sizes was defined for use with a standard PLCC68 package. This package is able to withstand temperatures up to 180degC. Based on the test chip, a parallel, low cost test system was developed enabling the measurement of 96 devices in parallel and hence significantly reducing the test and qualification time and costs.