Semiconductor Applications - Wafer and Hybrid Testing

Semiconductor testing can benefit greatly from a VXI-based test solution. The ATE can easily be reconfigured for each product and combines a broad range of instrumentation with a small footprint. EADS North America Defense Test and Services can provide ATE solutions from wafer to hybrid.

Wafer Probe

This ATE was designed to evaluate RF frequency synthesizers at the wafer level.

The frequency synthesizers consisted of RF inputs and outputs and digital divider control logic and mode control logic.

The ATE test set included RF generators, a digital I/O interface, and a 2 GHz oscilloscope. The test equipment was interfaced to the wafer via a probe card consisting of high-speed wafer probes for the RF signals and low-speed wafer probes for the digital interface.

Hybrid Testing

The ATE also was used to evaluate the hybrid into which the frequency synthesizers were packaged. The ATE was configured with additional equipment for noise testing.

High-speed ADC hybrids were tested by ATE configured with spectrally pure RF signal generators to provide SNR, harmonics, level ripple, and intermodulation. The VXI interface contained RF routing relay switches and the ITA interface contained a low-noise amplifier and high-rolloff filters.

The ADC digital output was acquired by a high-speed digital interface. An FFT was performed on the digital data to produce the final test results.