Digital Ic Automatic Test Equipment, Key Technology Research

IC (integrated circuits) test plays an important role in the IC industry and is an indispensable part of IC design, fabrication, encapsulation and application. To verify that ICs work as designed, the first testing is performed by probing the ICs directly on the wafer, before dicing and packaging. One of critical instrument employed for wafer test is Automatic Testing Equipment (ATE).Firstly, the configuration of an ATE for digital IC testing is introduced in the thesis, including hardware blocks and functions. Two fundamental test techniques of digital-IC ATE, the logic function testing and DC parameter testing are also highlighted. Hardware blocks to realize this two test techniques have been designed, implemented and verified in the thesis.The block for DC parameter testing is named as PMU (Parametric Measurement Unit) in ATE. The PMU performs four measurement functions: FV (force voltage) and FIMV (force current), FVMI (force voltage measurement current) and FIMV (force current measurement voltage). A method is also presented for ensuring the performance of PMU testing. A test system, consisting of one MCU, two PMUs and peripheral circuits, has been implemented and utilized to test wafers of a DC-DC converter IC.Finally, the statistic data of 19 wafers testing are provided in the thesis, which shows that the test system possesses characteristics of the precision of 0.5% for voltage measurement and 5% for microampere current measurement with no fault in the process of testing. Therefore, the parametric measurement unit meets the requirement of DC parameter measurement in ATE.