Fabrication of Probe Beam by Using Joule Heating and Fusing

Abstract In this paper, we developed a beam of MEMS probe card using a BeCu sheet. Silicon wafer thickness of 400 m was fabricated byusing deep reactive ion etching (RIE) process. After forming through silicon via (TSV), the silicon wafer was bonded with BeCu sheet bysoldering process. We made BeCu beam stress-free owing to removing internal stress by using joule heating. BeCu beam was fused byusing joule heating caused by high current. The fabricated BeCu beam measured length of 1.75 mm and width of 0.44 mm, and thicknessof 15 m. We measured fusing current as a function of the cutting planes. Maximum current was 5.98 A at cutting plane of 150 m 2 . Theproposed low-cost and simple fabrication process is applicable for producing MEMS probe beam. Keywords : BeCu, Fusing, Joule heating, Probe card 1234+ Corresponding author: chocs@knu.ac.kr(Received : Dec. 6, 2012, Revised : Jan. 21, 2013, Accepted : Jan. 21, 2013)This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative CommonsAttribution Non-Commercial License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0)which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, andreproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.