New Solutions for Analytical Wafer Probing of Silicon and Wide Band Gap Power Devices

The increasing use of electric vehicles, renewable energy sources, and other high-power industrial applications continues to drive the development of new high-voltage/high current semiconductor devices. While wide band gap (WBG) based devices have many advantages in high power circuits, time to market constraints often dictate the need to test these types of advanced devices on-wafer. Wafer test of these power semiconductors poses unique challenges, as they often require test currents of more than 500 Amps, test voltages up to 10 Kilovolts and test temperatures up to 200° C. In addition, the wafer probing environment creates additional concerns such as the potential for electrical arcing, the need to minimize probe contact resistance to the DUT, and the requirement to maintain low contact and thermal resistance between the wafer and chuck.