Testing and inspection

What is the main advantage of vertical probe cards, which stand the needles perpendicular to the pads?

  1. AThe wafer cannot be heated
  2. BThey readily support high pin counts at fine pitch, simultaneous testing of many chips and pads arrayed over an area
  3. COnly one needle can be used
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Answer: B. They readily support high pin counts at fine pitch, simultaneous testing of many chips and pads arrayed over an area

Traditional cantilever probes touch pads with angled needles extending from the side, suiting pads arranged around the chip perimeter. Vertical and MEMS probes can be packed densely, suiting products with many pins and pads over the whole chip area, and simultaneous testing of many chips.

  • A. Whether the wafer can be heated depends on the prober's chuck.
  • B. Correct. They readily support high pin counts, fine pitch and area arrays.
  • C. Vertical cards can carry many needles.
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More Testing and inspection questions

  1. As wafer testing continues, aluminum debris from the pads and the like accumulates on the probe tips. What is done periodically in response?
  2. What is the purpose of enabling a prober's wafer stage (chuck) to be controlled to high or low temperature?
  3. In logic testing, which pair correctly names the test that exhaustively detects structural faults (such as stuck-at faults) using scan and similar, and the test that checks function as in actual operation?
  4. What is it called when good chips are judged defective and discarded because test limits are too strict or measurements are unstable?
  5. In memory testing, what is the main purpose of making a map recording which bits at which addresses failed?