Coordinate measurement on wafer level — From single sensors to sensor arrays

Systems fabricated in microtechnological processes are increasingly employed in industrial products. For that purpose, it is necessary to have a method at hand to measure them, just as macroscopic components and systems too, for reasons of quality assurance. Whereas there already exist a multitude of different systems based on diverse measurement principles for the measurement of single microsystems, a cost-effective measurement of a large number of microsystems on wafer level is currently realizable with optical measurement systems only, a fact that owes less to a technical advantage than to a faster measurement rate. This article portrays arrays fit for a parallelized tactile measurement of geometric dimensions and mechanical qualities of microsystems on a wafer. Moreover, it introduces innovative tactile elements for various measuring tasks and structures to be measured.