Keysight unveils its wire bond inspection solution for semiconductor manufacturing

“Keysight is dedicated to pioneering innovative solutions that address the most pressing challenges in the wire bonding process.”

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Keysight Technologies (Keysight) reveal its new wire bond inspection solution, the Electrical Structural Tester (EST). Design with semiconductor manufacturing in mind, the EST aims to boost the reliability and integrity of electronic components.

“Keysight is dedicated to pioneering innovative solutions that address the most pressing challenges in the wire bonding process,” said Carol Leh, Vice President of the Electronic Industrial Solutions Group Centre of Excellence at Keysight. “The Electrical Structural Tester empowers chip manufacturers to enhance production efficiency by rapidly identifying wire bond defects, ensuring superior quality and reliability in high-volume manufacturing.”

Key benefits of Keysight’s Electrical Structural Tester:

  • Improved defect detection: Electrical and non-electrical wire bond defects can be detected by analysing changes in capacitive coupling patterns. This improves functionality and reliability levels.
  • Ensures high-volume manufacturing: Users can see throughput of up to 72,000 units per hour, with the solution able to test up to 20 integrated circuits simultaneously. This boosts productivity and efficiency, particularly in high-volume production environments.
  • High data yield: Defects can be captured, with yield numbers improved, through marginal retry test (MaRT), dynamic part averaging test (DPAT), and real-time part averaging test (RPAT) methods.

With the increasing density of chips, especially in medical devices and automotive systems, the semiconductor industry faces higher demands. Current testing methods don’t detect wire bond structural defects, leading to costly failures. Additionally, traditional testing methods rely on sampling techniques, which aren’t the most reliable when identifying wire bond structural defects.

With its nano Vectorless Test Enhanced Performance (nVTEP) technology, EST can create a capacitive structure between the wire bond and sensor plate. This method identifies subtle defects like wire sag, near shorts, and stray wires.