A low cost temperature-controlled chuck for a cascade probestation

It is getting increasingly important to be able to characterize the temperature behavior of transistors and circuits. This paper describes construction of a low cost temperature controlled chuck for this purpose. The motivation for this in-house design is that equipment of this kind is expensive. A simple inexpensive design with acceptable performance can be constructed with standard circuits. The goal for the prototype is to be able to regulate the temperature between 0°C and 80°C ±0.5°C with a distribution error over the top plate of maximum ±0.5°C in the central area. The performance of the temperaturecontrolled chuck is evaluated and it displays behavior within the specified goals.