Probe apparatus,wafer inspecting apparatus provided with the probe apparatus and wafer inspecting method

A wafer inspection method comprising relatively displacing a circuit board for inspection or a circuit board for connection by location-varying mechanisms making up a parallelism adjusting mechanism to temporarily fix the three parties of the circuit board for inspection, an anisotropically conductive connector and the circuit board for connection in a state that the anisotropically conductive connector has been pinched by the circuit board for inspection and the circuit board for connection, thereby electrically connecting inspection electrodes in the circuit board for inspection to their corresponding terminal electrodes in the circuit board for connection through conductive parts for connection in the anisotropically conductive connector, further pressurizing a probe device from this state to measure a parallelism of the circuit board for inspection to a wafer and a parallelism of the circuit board for connection to the wafer in a state that a contact member in a probe card is brought into contact with the wafer that is an object of inspection, setting a correction quantity of the quantity of displacement by the location-varying mechanism on the basis of results obtained, conducting an inspection initial state-setting operation for adjusting the quantity of displacement on the basis of the correction quantity, thereby adjusting a parallelism of the circuit board for inspection to the wafer and a parallelism of the circuit board for connection to the wafer, and bringing the whole probe device into contact with the wafer in a state that displacement of the circuit board for inspection or the circuit board for connection in a direction that a clearance between the circuit board for inspection and the circuit board for connection becomes great has been prohibited, thereby conducting electrical inspection.