Probe Card Jig Aligning Probes to Minimize Overdrive
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Solution Overview
Problem
The challenge in semiconductor probe card manufacturing lies in accurately arranging probes at minute intervals to prevent electrical interference and ensure reliable contact with chip pads, where structural deformation and oxide films on chip pads lead to contact errors and increased overdrive requirements, potentially damaging the probes or chip pads.
Innovation Solution
A jig with a guide hole plate and reference plate is used to align probes at predetermined positions, ensuring uniform height and alignment, allowing for effective contact with chip pads while minimizing overdrive, and coupling them to a microprobe head in an upright state.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If probes are arranged at minute intervals to correspond to highly integrated semiconductors, then the probe card can inspect more chip pads, but electrical interference and short between adjacent probes increases
Solution Approach 1:
The probe card is divided into multiple probe arrays, with each array dedicated to inspecting a specific region of the semiconductor wafer. This segmentation allows probes to be spaced further apart within each array, reducing electrical interference while maintaining the ability to inspect a large number of chip pads across the entire wafer surface.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transitions from a single-layer probe arrangement to a three-dimensional structure where probes are arranged in multiple arrays at different positions and orientations. This dimensional change allows probes to be distributed more sparsely in each local area while covering the entire wafer surface, thus reducing electrical interference between adjacent probes.
2Reliability
If overdrive is applied to ensure stable electrical contact between probes and chip pad, then contact reliability improves, but structural deformation on probe or damage to conductive layer of chip pad occurs
Solution Approach 1:
The probe tip is designed with a localized compliant structure at the contact point, allowing only the tip portion to deform elastically under overdrive force while the main body of the probe remains rigid. This local quality differentiation enables sufficient contact pressure for reliable electrical connection without causing structural deformation that would compromise the overall probe integrity or damage the chip pad.
3Manufacturing precision
If planarity of tips of probes is improved to enable easy contact with desired positions, then contact precision increases, but manufacturing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
A planarity adjustment mechanism is incorporated into the probe card assembly process, where the vertical positions of individual probes are adjusted and fixed before the probes are permanently mounted to the substrate. This preliminary action ensures that all probe tips are at the same height, enabling uniform contact with the chip pad surface while simplifying the overall manufacturing process by separating the alignment step from the mounting step.
Data Source
AI summary
The present disclosure provides a jig for manufacturing probe card for semiconductor inspection, a probe alignment system comprising same, and a probe card manufactured thereby.