Probe Cards

Probe cards are devices used to test and verify the proper operation of integrated circuits. Nielson Scientific is developing a cryogenic probe card for the Army with a very small tip pitch for characterizing neighboring pixels of infrared focal plane arrays.

The cryogenic probe card designed for the Army is a MEMS vertical probe card built on a silicon carbide substrate to allow visual alignment of the small probe tips with the focal plane array pixels under test. To make this design possible, we used our proprietary 3D etching technology to create through-wafer vias in the silicon carbide wafer to allow the routing of signals from the probe tips out to the test equipment.