4. Industrial test development cycle (2)
Test
Specification
Volume
estimation
Sales price
target
Implementation choice
5. RF MEMS specifics
•A New technology = gap to bridge
– More characterization required
– Technology yield & product validation
•A High Volume / Short TTM
– Cellular phones market
•Market competitive ASP
– Competitive mature technology set ref ASP
– ASP must be at least similar, or lower
7. Test development today
Application bench
Test
Production IC Test TOTAL
Labview, Custom
Visual Basic, …
Tester proprietary
language
2 different code
environments to maintain
and correlate
Several discrete
instruments
Rack and stacks, per
testsets
Automatic Test
Equipment
Integrating multi
instrument resources
2 different CAPEX, limiting
re-use of test capabilities
Application board
reference HW
EWS Probe card
FT Loadboard
3 reference HW to be
designed, validated
What if we could merge both at
lower NRE and shortening TTM ?
9. More constraints
•RF MEMS switches come with various flavors:
– 3 SPST
– 5 SPST
– Dual: SP5T + SP3T
– SP12T
– Etc…
•More measurement processes:
– Small resistor close to 1Ω
– RF to 6GHz
10. The tester choice
•PXI backplane
•Test environment open to bench, and flexible
– Same software = Labview + Teststand
– Able to easily connect to more bench instruments
•Fast execution and data transfer
– PXIe able to transfer @ 1Gb/s
– Embedded controller
•Limited or 0 footprint:
can be installed on the prober.
•Low CAPEX
11. PXI: Flexible & low cost for HP-RF
•Single platform can handle characterization +
volume
– More different options for characterization
– More parallelism for volume
•Re-usable
– Same software
– TestStand able to quickly switch to parallelism
•Low cost
– 1/10 of standard ATE CAPEX
– Maintenance & operating cost also 1/10 lower
12. PXI is production friendly for those ICs
•Equivalent throughput
– Standard acquisition + FFT at 1ms
– High end ATE also at 1 or 2ms
•Reduced down time
– Replace full tester instead of single board
– PXI tester price = 2 or 3 ATE boards
•Higher parallelism can be achieved
– PXI can be chained, ATE cannot.
13. PXI for production
•As a National Instruments Alliance Partner we are
also considering the new NI-STS (Semiconductor Test
System) as an alternative
14. Our hardware solution
•Mother board + daughter board
– Flexibility
• Up to 16 MEMS switches
• Any configuration: SPST, SPnT, etc…
– Lower NRE per configuration <2k€
•Mother board connects to standard
instrumentation
– 100V high voltage managed locally
– Kelvin resistor measurements local
17. Test results
•Capability to watch for low resistance
•Low NRE proved:
– CAPEX of 35 k€ only
– Probe card at < 2 k€ per new pad ring configuration
• Even lower for duplication
•Operation ready for volume:
– Reference probe card exists
• Automatic checker
– Automatic wafer contact detection
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0.0E+00
5.0E-06
1.0E-05
1.5E-05
2.0E-05
2.5E-05
3.0E-05
R(Ω)
t (s)
18. Specification / Features
•RF up to 6GHz
•16 MEMS channels
•Kelvin Resistor measurements at +/- 0.1Ω
•Dynamic R measurement at 4MS/s
•pF Capacitance measurement capability
•Programmable actuation voltage up to 130V
•Programmable actuation shape (AWG)
– Bipolar, bipolar RZ, triangle…
