A Full Automatic On-Wafer High Frequency Measurement Station in Industrial Environment for Silicon Devices

Improvements in performance of MOSFET and BJT in MOS and BICMOS silicon technologies related to low cost productions make these technologies attractive for the fabrication of radio frequency integrated circuits. The high frequency characterization of such devices and of the interconnect elements is of primary importance for the simulation of advanced HF integrated circuits. Since more and more measurements are required and have to be conducted in an industrial environment at wafer level, a full automatic high frequency measurement station has been developed and is presented in this paper. The particularity of the silicon wafer probing is described in terms of calibration ("off-wafer" calibrations) and de-embedding (not HF optimized patterns situated in scribe lanes of production wafers). Parameter extraction procedures are described and examples of results with advanced technologies are pointed out. The potential problems in implementation of such a station, problems observed during measurements, and in the calibration step are explained and their solutions are indicated.