Date: 16/08/2009

Wafer probe card from FormFactor has achieved more than 15 million contacts cycles

FormFactor has announced its Takumi wafer probe card employed at Elpida have performed between 15 and 16 million contact cycles (or touch downs) on silicon wafers. This level of record performance is unmatchable compared to traditional parametric probing technologies, FormFactor claims.

"The Takumi probing technology is remarkably reliable and stable," stated Masao Shimizu, Fab Process Group Engineer, Elpida Memory. "With the confidence we have in Takumi, we have reduced the need to retest significantly and virtually eliminated probe card-related fail data."

Takumi is now in use at seven of the top 10 (by revenue) integrated device manufacturers
(IDMs).

"The use of wafer probing for parametric test plays an important role in assuring the quality of our customers' manufacturing processes and the durability and accuracy of our Takumi parametric products are proving to be very valuable," stated Bruce Bolliger, VP and GM of FormFactor's SoC product business unit. "Our Takumi products not only enable us to make progress on today's test challenges and align with the next-generation requirements of our customers' test roadmaps, but also deliver to our customers a clear path for shrinking the test pads on their wafers to allow more room for patterning devices. "