Equipment for On-Wafer Testing From 220 to 325 GHz

A system of electronic instrumentation, constituting the equivalent of a two-port vector network analyzer, has been developed for use in on-wafer measurement of key electrical characteristics of semiconductor devices at frequencies from 220 to 325 GHz. A prior system designed according to similar principles was reported in Equipment for On-Wafer Testing at Frequencies Up to 220 GHz (NPO-20760), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 25, No. 11 (November 2001), page 42. As one would expect, a major source of difficulty in progressing to the present higher-frequency-range system was the need for greater mechanical precision as wavelengths shorten into the millimeter range, approaching the scale of mechanical tolerances of prior systems. The system (see figure) includes both commercial off-the-shelf and custom equipment. As in the system of the cited prior article, the equipment includes test sets that are extended versions of commercial network analyzers that function in a lower frequency range. The extension to the higher frequency range is accomplished by use of custom frequency-extension modules that contain frequency multipliers and harmonic mixers. On-wafer measurement is made possible by waveguide wafer probes that were custom designed and built for this wavelength range, plus an on-wafer calibration substrate designed for use with these probes. In this case, the calibration substrate was specially fabricated by laser milling. The system was used to make the first on-wafer measurements of a semiconductor device in the frequency range from 220 to 320 GHz. Some of the measurement results showed that the device had gain.