Probe heads optimized for wafer-level chip-scale package testing

Smiths Interconnect, a leading provider of technically differentiated electronic components, subsystems, microwave and radio frequency products, has launched the Volta series probe heads, optimized for wafer-level chip-scale package testing.

As phones and smart devices get more powerful, so do the integrated chips that support them. Volta is used for testing the chips (while in their wafer form) that are behind everything from Bluetooth and power management to digital display controllers. Volta helps customers deliver higher quality products by ensuring the chips in them are up to specification, and perform as they should.

Volta is the result of Smiths Interconnect’s close collaboration with customers, and has been designed to significantly outperform the competition in durability and reliability. It uses innovative, electrical contact technologies and proprietary-engineered materials to achieve improved performance and production efficiency.

In the Volta series spring probe contacts are used in place of cantilever and traditional vertical probe card technologies. As part of Smiths Interconnect’s complete line of semiconductor test products, the Volta Series offers a number of differentiating benefits:

• The design itself ensures an extremely short signal path enabling low and stable contact resistance, high current carrying capacity and longer life cycle.
• Proprietary-engineered plastic and machined ceramic materials used in the product make for improved planarity that allows increased test parallelism.
• The housing allows for easy maintenance, quick installation and field repair potential that all add up to reduced cost of ownership.
• The Volta Manual Actuator (Lid) design allows sorted die tests at all sites simultaneously as well as eliminates the possibility of die cracking even after repetitive tests, enabling probe card bring-ups prior to the wafer availability.

“The semiconductor packaging industry is evolving quickly to accommodate complex functional integration of ICs for higher performance in smaller form factors,” said Jeff Dick, Marketing Vice President at Smiths Interconnect.

“The technical challenges and increases in packaging costs are fueling the growth of Wafer Level Packages and Known Good Dies. Smiths Interconnect’s Volta Series addresses these trends with a cost-effective, high-performance option specifically designed to meet customers’ needs.”