THE MANUFACTURE OF TEST PROBES USING NANOFABRICATION TECHNIQUES

THE MANUFACTURE OF TEST PROBES USING NANOFABRICATION TECHNIQUES

The project is between the particle physics group of the SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy of Glasgow University and the company Probe Test Solutions Ltd, PTSL.
Modern semiconductor technologies rely on miniature semiconductor components. To allow the fabricator of these components to test their devices fine pitch probe needles are required to make electrical contact to them. However, the continued technological development of the semiconductor industry has reduced the device size to the point where the probe needle industry is limited in its ability to probe the device due to minimum probe needle pitch. This project aims at overcoming the technological limitations with the present probe needle pitch with the use of the very nano-semiconductor processing technologies that they are required to probe.
PTSL are a supplier of test hardware solutions to semiconductor customers, concentrating on probe-cards for semiconductor wafer probe. They are based in Lanarkshire, Scotland. The company is a self-financed company, funding its growth purely from revenue generated. A significant portion of their profits is reinvested to improve their offering via new recruits, new equipment, and R&D. The company received the 2012 Lanarkshire business excellence award.
The particle physics group at the university of Glasgow has a strong detector development team. They has successfully designed and built silicon particle tracker systems for leading particle physics experiments. The Glasgow Laboratory for Advanced Detector Development (GLADD) is their new fabrication and test facility. The GLADD, with an estimated worth of £1M in equipment and 17 staff, is a recent step-change for GU-PPE detector development activities. Most recently they competed work for the silicon tracker of the ATLAS experiment and the silicon vertex locator of the LHCb experiment both based at the CERN large hadron collider. They are presently developing the next generation of particle detectors. As part of this work detailed thermal and mechanical models of composite detector and electronic structures were developed. The group has also developed extensive skills in nanofabrication in the University of Glasgow James Watt Nanofabrication Centre, JWNC, arising for the development of novel semiconductor detectors, including the 3D detector. This work was further extended into the area of probes for biological applications. This expertise, gained from STFC funded developments of particle physics instrumentation, will be applied to this project.

The project aim is to investigate the possibility to manufacture small size wafer probe needles using semiconductor nanofabrication techniques for the use to test semiconductor structures.
The project work is divided into four sections. The first is the modeling, using finite element analysis, the proposed probe needles and their fixations. The second work package is the design of a process flow and the development of the process to allow for the fabrication of these needles. The third task is the testing of individual probes and assembled probe heads in the laboratory and production facility of PTSL. Finally validation will take place at a world leading semiconductor component manufacture.