MEMS Vertical Probe Cards With Ultra Densely Arrayed Metal Probes for Wafer-Level IC Testing

We have developed a MEMS probe-card technology for wafer-level testing ICs with 1-D line-arrayed or 2-D area-arrayed dense pads layouts. With a novel metal MEMS fabrication technique, an area-arrayed tip matrix is realized with an ultradense tip pitch of 90 mum times196 mum for testing 2-D pad layout, and a 50-mum minimum pitch is also achieved in line-arrayed probe cards for testing line-on-center or line-on-perimeter wafers. By using the anisotropic etching properties of single-crystalline silicon, novel oblique concave cavities are formed as electroplating moulds for the area-arrayed microprobes. With the micromachined cavity moulds, the probes are firstly electroplated in a silicon wafer and further flip-chip packaged onto a low-temperature cofired ceramic board for signal feeding to an automatic testing equipment. The microprobes can be efficiently released using a silicon-loss technique with a lateral underneath etching. The measured material properties of the electroplated nickel and the Sn-Ag solder bump are promising for IC testing applications. Mechanical tests have verified that the microprobes can withstand a 65-mN probing force, while the tip displacement is 25 mum, and can reliably work for more than 100 000 touchdowns. The electric test shows that the probe array can provide a low contact resistance of below 1 Omega, while the current leakage is only 150 pA at 3.3 V for adjacent probes.