Software for Wafer-Level Testing of Microfabricated Devices

Prober Assistant Measurement System (PAMS) is a computer program that automates the time-consuming process of testing microfabricated devices (integrated circuits and/or microelectromechanical systems) at the wafer level. PAMS was written specifically for use with the Karl Suss probe station (a commercially available wafer-testing apparatus) and is compatible with associated testing circuitry that conforms to the IEEE 488 general-purpose interface bus (GPIB) standard. Manual wafer testing is tedious and susceptible to error because the process involves controlling the probe station to position the probe leads on each device, configuring the associated testing equipment, and recording the measurement data. In contrast, PAMS automatically positions the probe leads according to a wafer map and automatically performs the measurement and recording steps. Multiple devices on a wafer can be tested simultaneously, or multiple measurements can be made on a single device. Acquired data can be displayed on a screen and/or recorded in a file. At present, PAMS is executed on a computer based on a Pentium II processor with a clock rate of 400 MHz, 128MB of random-access memory, and 6GB of hard-disk storage, and running the Windows NT operating system.