SBIR Phase I: Fully-Automated Non-contact Probe System for On-wafer MillimeterWave and THz Electronics

SBIR 第一阶段：用于晶圆上毫米波和太赫兹电子器件的全自动非接触式探针系统

• 批准号: 1721562
• 负责人: NIRU NAHAR
• 金额: $ 22.5万
• 依托单位: TeraProbes Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-07-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1721562&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Fully; Automated; Non

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop a novel, fully-automated, non-contact metrology system that is accurate, repeatable, and cost-effective for comprehensive characterization of high-performance electronics, photonics, micro-fluidics, and biomedical device technologies. The innovative non-contact solution is free of the conventional wear and tear issues plaguing contact-based probing systems. The proposed technique could open up new research areas and directions that could have an immediate benefit to the entire semiconductor industry, thus broadly impacting all areas of our "information-driven" society. In particular, millimeter-wave and terahertz frequency bands (30-3000GHz) offer unique solutions to address key problems in sensing and spectroscopy, medical, pharmaceutical and security imaging, as well as extremely-high-data rate, ubiquitous communications. All-electronic integrated systems are badly needed for compact and cost effective applications in the above-mentioned areas. More importantly, testing and characterization of these new high-performance devices has been a challenge at their intended operation frequencies. Thus, there is ample need for comprehensive, high-performance metrology systems for characterizing entire electronic wafers automatically and without making physical contact. The automated probe system proposed here enables, for the first time, fast and accurate device and chip characterization, without making physical contact with the test wafer.The intellectual merit of this project is a novel non-contact probe system, based on wireless coupling of the test signals onto the test wafer, through on-chip antennas that are monolithically integrated with the test device. Since the physical contact to the test wafer is eliminated, there is no wear & tear to the chip or the test-bed, significantly improving reliability and repeatability as well as eliminating much of the associated testing costs. This innovative solution is scalable, and offers a comprehensive, elegant and cost-effective solution for single or differential-mode on-wafer characterization for the first time. Although the physical size of the on-chip antennas are slightly larger than typical contact-probe landing pads, the overall cost-savings in operation, labor, and maintenance offered by this innovative approach readily outweighs the on-chip real-estate occupied by the integrated antennas. Perhaps more importantly, this novel test-bed enables fully-automated, unattended testing of every single chip on an entire electronic wafer, even enabling continuous processing of multiple wafers without user involvement, thus providing significant savings in overall testing costs for high-speed electronic devices.

这个小型企业创新研究阶段I项目将开发出一种新颖的，完全自动化的非接触度量系统，该系统具有准确，可重复且具有成本效益，以全面表征高性能电子，光子学，微富集设备和生物医学设备技术。创新的非接触式解决方案没有常规的磨损问题，这些问题困扰着基于接触的探测系统。拟议的技术可以打开新的研究领域和方向，这些方向可能会对整个半导体行业产生任何好处，从而广泛影响我们“以信息驱动”社会的所有领域。特别是，毫米波和Terahertz频带（30-3000GHZ）提供了独特的解决方案，以解决感应和光谱，医疗，药物和安全成像以及极高的率，无处不在的通信的关键问题。在上述领域的紧凑型和具有成本效益的应用需要全电子集成系统。更重要的是，这些新的高性能设备的测试和表征在其预期的操作频率上一直是一个挑战。因此，非常需要全面，高性能的计量系统来自动表征整个电子晶片，而无需进行身体接触。此处提出的自动探针系统首次可以使快速准确的设备和芯片表征，而无需与测试晶片进行身体接触。该项目的智力优点是一个新型的非接触探针系统，基于通过与测试设备单独集成的芯片天线的测试晶片上的测试信号无线耦合的测试信号的无线耦合。由于消除了与测试晶片的物理接触，因此芯片或测试床没有磨损，可显着提高可靠性和可重复性，并消除许多相关的测试成本。这种创新的解决方案是可扩展的，并首次为单个或差速器在磁力表征上提供了全面，优雅和成本效益的解决方案。尽管片上天线的物理尺寸比典型的接触式搜索垫略大，但这种创新方法提供的运营，人工和维护的总体成本节省量很容易超过综合天线所占据的片上房地产。也许更重要的是，这个新颖的测试床可以对整个电子晶圆上的每个芯片进行完全自动化的，无人看管的测试，甚至可以在无需用户参与的情况下连续处理多个晶圆，从而为高速电子设备的总体测试成本提供了可观的节省。