Implementation of PhotoMOS Relay for ATE Application

Globalization is the increasing interaction of people, states, or countries through the growth of the international flow of money, ideas, and culture. Thus, is create competition between semiconductor manufacturer to achieve low cost, high productivity, fast delivery and time to market are the vital factors to the success. Therefore, encouragement from manufacturer to looking for creative ideas with cost down reduction and high productivity [1]. Cost reduction covers a wide range such as package design optimization, process flow improvement and also testing which is the final gate before ship out the good and quality parts to customers. This paper provides the implementation of PhotoMOS relay to enhance the stability, sustainability and fastens the measurement in semiconductor automatic test equipment (ATE) testing application. Relays are an essential part in semiconductor testing application and responsible as a switch to turn on and turn off the supply voltages or currents from tester instrument through test program control during testing to ensure functionality of electronic component meeting the specification before delivering to the consumer application. The relay functionality is sensitive especially in timing, resistances and frequency because it would influence the testing measurement results, induce instability of test program and result in unnecessary yield loss and capacity loss. However, this can be resolving through optimization test program. Nevertheless, there is a limitation of the mechanical relay which could not further or resolve through the test program. In this paper, an introduction of the PhotoMOS relays and differences as compared to mechanical relays (Pickering), experimental verification results in term of switching time, resistances of the relay and hot switch in Teradyne uFLEX tester platform for speed sensor devices.