As the process proceeds to approach its limits, what is the future of chip packaging and testing?

Before chip packaging, a probe card is used to test the performance of the bare crystal. It is the interface between the chip under test (chip) and the tester, and the use of probe cards can increase the yield by nearly 20% .

According to the report, the global probe card market size was USD 1.65 billion in 2018 and will reach more than USD 2 billion in 2024, growing at a CAGR of more than 4%. The growth of the overall semiconductor industry has led to an increase in the use of probe cards for package testing, with advanced probe cards being the major driver.

The projected doubling of transistors every 24 months also means that transistors need to be smaller and smaller, which poses an increasing challenge to package test requirements, and it is also spurring the development of advanced probe cards and other innovative sealing technologies. Compared to traditional probe cards, advanced probe cards show significant changes: increased number of probes, reduced probe size, reduced probing distances, increased material thicknesses, changes in aperture shapes, and the emergence of new materials. These trends present major challenges in the production of probes and all components that make up a probe card, and key guide plates have caused headaches for traditional manufacturers.

Traditionally, guide plates are often machined using mechanical drilling techniques, which are limited by the size of the drill bit. Typically, the diameter of the round holes that can be machined is 40um or more, and the dimensions of the shaped holes are 100um or more on one side. The minimum distance that can be processed by this process is not less than 50um, and the processing time for a single hole is greater than 10 seconds. In order to reduce the grounding and production costs of advanced probe cards, a new policy structure has been developed in recent years, which has led to a sharp increase in the demand for matching square hole guides. How to make 30-60um square holes has become the most serious obstacle for many probe card companies to become world-class manufacturers.

GF's proven laser micro-hole processing enterprise technology provides efficient, high-quality solutions to the problem of micro-fine square hole processing methods. We can be equipped with ultra-fast laser development with a short pulse, high energy density characteristics of the processing process of the material and the surrounding environment will not affect the generation of burns, the hole wall does not produce burrs; with the vibration mirror system of multi-functional rotary cutting technology, to avoid China's traditional laser products may lead to the generation of the process of processing of the positive cone holes, and can really realize the straight through the hole or even inverted cone hole processing.

We have developed patented processes for common materials used in the probe card industry to maximize the processing efficiency of materials such as silicon nitride, alumina and zirconia. This allows our integrated solution to process a 35 x 35 micron square hole with only 3.5 micron rounded corners and a pitch of 7 microns in less than 2 seconds and to process the surrounding area with negligible thermal impact.

In addition to the exponential increase in efficiency, the consistency and reliability of laser processing is something we value in our probe card users. Imagine a probe card with 10,000 square holes. If any one of these defects occurs during the final processing stage, the entire probe card could be scrapped, and the cost in lost time and money could be considerable.