Water-level charged device model for electrostatic discharge test methods, and apparatus using same
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsTimothy J. Maloney, Bruce C. Chou
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A charged device model (CDM) electrostatic discharge (ESD) testing is carried out at wafer level. Wafer CDM pulses are repeatedly applied and monitored. The wafer CDM (WCDM) pulses are accomplished with a probe-mounted printed-circuit board and a high-frequency transformer that captures fast CDM pulses. Modeling of CDM and WCDM in the time and frequency domain illustrates the dominant effects, and shows that WCDM can reproduce all the major phenomena of package-level CDM testing.
Claims21
An apparatus for charged device model (CDM) electrostatic discharge (ESD) testing, comprising:
- a charge plate to be disposed above a semiconductor wafer;
- an electrical probe disposed above the charge plate and passing from above the charge plate to below the charge plate;
- a mechanical link to position the charge plate and electrical probe above the semiconductor wafer;
- a transformer coupled to the electrical probe;
- and
- control circuitry coupled to the transformer, wherein the transformer and control circuitry facilitate in situ pulse measurement.
A method of simulating a chip-handling spark, the method comprising:
- simulating an electrostatic discharge (ESD) on a semiconductive device by discharging from a discharge plate that is disposed above the device active surface.
A method of simulating a chip-handling spark, the method comprising:
- using a wafer charged device model (WCDM) to simulate an electrostatic discharge (ESD) on a wafer by discharging from a discharge plate that is disposed above the wafer active surface, the discharge plate including:
- a center and a edge;
- wherein a spark arcs from a probe tip that approaches the wafer, and wherein effective circuitry includes a transformer that is closer to the edge than to the center and the probe tip is closer to the center than to the edge.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.