運用關聯規則於晶圓探針卡管理系統之應用

Abstract

在多變高科技製造業設備下，晶圓探針卡為半導體晶圓針測階段不可或缺的關鍵測試介 面。探針卡是測試機台與晶片的溝通橋樑，包含數百隻探針且排列固定在針測機上，針測機將 晶圓上每一個IC 定位，使探針與銲墊接觸以量測電阻值，透過電性信號傳遞到測試機台分析其 功能與特性，並判斷晶粒的好壞。然而，晶圓探針卡包含大量探針要偵測異常位置上是有困難， 再者在半導體領域上沒有一個比較有效率的自動化解決方案。 本研究結合統計製程管制（SPC）統計方法並運用資料探勘關聯規則（Association Rule）技 術發掘出測試良率異常與機台、測試程式、探針卡製程之規則，並回饋於晶圓探針卡管理系統， 以協助維修人員瞭解異常狀況並降低摸索維修時間，透過有效維修將延長探針卡的使用壽命， 同時良好的晶圓探針卡維修保養與管理，有助於提高測試流量，提升測試產能與良率，進而降 低測試生產成本，以滿足組織生產營運需求，創造企業利潤。

In the semiconductor industry, the wafer probe card, a mechanical and electrical bridge to connect the wafer with tester, is necessary in a wafer probing process to evaluate the function, reliability and performance for a chip. The wafer probe card contains hundreds of the needles arranged on a prober. To measure the contact resistance（CRes）, prober is used to locate each IC on a wafer and allows the needles of wafer probe card to touch pad for wafer testing. Then, the electrical signal is transmitted to a tester for further analyzing the function and characteristic of chips and evaluating the quality of a wafer. Thus, the quality of needles on a wafer probe card highly affects the testing quality, testing time and even the yield rate. However, due to the large number of needles on a wafer probe card, detecting the damage positions is difficult. Furthermore, there is no automatic and efficient solution on the semiconductor domain. In order to increase the yield rate of production, a method which combines the Statistics Process Control（SPC）technique with Association Rule Mining technique is proposed and is applied on the collected production data to discover rules which including tester machine,test program and process for detecting the damage positions. Then, the obtained result is a feedback of the probe card maintenance management system to inform the maintenance engineers and assist them to understand the abnormal situations. Such helpful feedbacks can not only reduce the maintenance time but also increase the life time for a wafer probe card. For a semiconductor company, maintaining and managing the wafer probe card leads to enhance production capability and yield rate, reduce the production cost, achieve the goal of production plans, and create more profits.