Proactive Actions on Customer's Needs with Global Business Strategies
In recent years, a semiconductor has expanded applying to products in various fields, such as digital home appliances and multi functional cellular phones. At the same time, a demand for probe cards has changed the forefront semiconductor. JEM develops the marketing to anticipate the needs for probe cards by looking steadily the tendency of the semiconductor products and bearing closely on semiconductor manufacturers. As semiconductor factories have expanded globally, JEM organizes a global link with Japan, Asia, United States of America, and Europe to anticipate customers needs in each region. JEM expands sales by creating JEM roadmap and sales strategies based on demands for global customers and a road map of the semiconductor industry. With the global strategies and proactive actions, JEM is striving to provide probe cards that exceed the demands of the customers.
What is Probe Card?
Probe Card is a coined word of "Probe" and "Card".
The probe card is a tool for testing semiconductors used at "Wafer Test" to check quality of IC or LSI in the first process of semiconductor manufacturing. The probe card is expendable.
In the manufacturing process of semiconductors such as IC and LSI, many IC chips are fixed on a wafer, then the wafer is diced and the diced chips are incorporated into packages. Before hundreds of IC chips fixed on a wafer are diced into chips with a few square millimeters, "Wafer Test" is performed to check quality of IC chips.
At wafer test, the needles of the probe make contact with the bonding pads of IC chips or LSI chips fixed on a wafer. After that, the electric characteristics are measured to check quality of IC chips.
The probe card is a crucial tool for testing semiconductors at wafer test.
The Flow of Semiconductor Manufacturing Process
Overview of Wafer Test
Tester
Tester is test equipment to measure electric characteristics. Electric signals are transmitted and received through the probe card to and from IC chips or LSI chips fixed on a semiconductor wafer.
Prober
Prober is equipment that measures electric characteristics with a tester connected to the probe card. The needles of the probe make contact with the bonding pads of chips automatically to measure the electric characteristics of IC chips or LSI chips fixed on a semiconductor wafer.
Three kinds of tests are performed.
- DC Test:Detecting the presence or absence of break and short circuit. Checking the I/O voltage. Checking the output current.
- AC Test :Checking the waveforms of output signals
- Function Test:Checking the output patterns. Checking whether writing data is possible or not. Measuring the data holding time. Checking the presence or absence of mutual interference of the data.
The quality of chips is checked by these tests.
