RF wafer probing with improved contact repeatability using nanometer positioning

Abstract

This paper presents an improved technique for monitoring and controlling the contact condition of on-wafer RF probes with nanometer accuracy to enhance the measurement repeatability. The set-up consists of a vector network analyzer, a modified probe station with a planar calibration substrate aligned under microwave GSG probe through a closed-loop nanopositioner and a camera system. A fully one-port SOL calibration is performed in the frequency range 0.05-50 GHz. A repeatability study based on standard deviations of the measured data considering both conventional and proposed approaches is described. From these experimental results, the improvement of the technique proposed is achieved by accurately controlling the probe contacts.