Process Control & Reliability
The demands of today’s technologies require precise and economical characterization. Until now, reliability testing took both a great deal of time and money as devices had to be packaged before testing. Recent innovations in thinner oxides and gate dielectrics make packaging devices without damaging them difficult.
In order to prevent the loss of processed and therefore expensive wafers, it has become essential to be able to perform reliability tests on the wafer itself. The importance of this test option will grow as process technologies move beyond the 45 nm range. Additionally, multi-site probing allows achieves the high-throughput necessary for obtaining significant statistical sample sizes with which reliability is measured. Finally, measuring and characterizing modern devices demands low-leakage measurement equipment that can withstand temperatures up to and exceeding 400°C, which is needed for accelerating failure mechanisms.
SUSS MicroTec provides the ideal platform for process control and reliability tests at wafer level. Unique, dedicated 200 mm (PM8WLR) and 300 mm (PM300WLR) systems are the ultimate in high-throughput, wafer-level reliability (WLR) testing and offer several one-of-a-kind features for performing tests such as:
- Electromigration (EM)Determines the reliability of copper and aluminum interconnects
- Time-Dependent Dielectric Breakdown (TDDB)Determines the reliability of the gate oxide
- Hot-Carrier Injection (HCI) & Negative-Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI)Determines the reliability of the transistor device
If the pad layout and die index of your devices changes often, a solution of up to 46 PH100 ProbeHeads™ in combination with any of the standard, highly-stable SUSS probe systems delivers optimum flexibility. If only the die index of your devices changes frequently, a SUSS ProbeWedge™ or high-temperature VersaTiles™ can be mounted onto PH110 or PH250 ProbeHeads for flexible WLR testing. Finally, if the die index of your devices changes seldom, or there are several indices that must be handled at once, SUSS has a unique WLR test solution. The PA300PS-MA probe system with MicroAlign™ Technology is used in conjunction with multi-site probe tiles to automate the probe-to-pad alignment process for a flexible WLR solution.
