Liquid Contact Probing inside the SEM

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Sergej Fatikow
• Subject Area: Measurement Systems ; Automation, Mechatronics, Control Systems, Intelligent Technical Systems, Robotics ; Electronic Semiconductors, Components and Circuits, Integrated Systems, Sensor Technology, Theoretical Electrical Engineering ; Synthesis and Properties of Functional Materials
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 381855500

Downscaling of electronic device dimensions is still an ongoing task and has been the basis of the semiconductor industry for years. Therefore, qualitative measurements with high resolution are indispensable and the enhancement of old and the invention of new techniques are necessary.In the last years, a lot of new techniques have been proposed for the local characterization of materials in nanotechnology. The mostly used characterization technique in this industry is on-wafer contact probing, which has been limited in its resolution to the micrometer scale.This proposal aims at bringing the contact probing to the nanometer dimension by using nanodroplets of liquid metal to establish an electrical contact between nanostructures and prober. Therefore, a fully automatable robotic probing station inside an SEM will be fabricated. Pick and place procedures with nanometer precision will be used for a new alignment process of the prober by establishing a liquid-solid-liquid interface with the alloy Ga-In-Sn as electrode. This will provide an easy and abrasion-free electrical contact to the device under test. The final part of this project will end in the fabrication of a prototype probe and a customized calibration kit, which exploit the liquid metal for nanometer RF contact probing.Furthermore, liquid metals will be thoroughly examined as functional materials for automated manipulations inside an SEM for electrical and mechanical applications in nanotechnology.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants