Tokyo Electron (TEL) Introduces New Fully Automated Wafer Prober, Precio(TM).

TOKYO -- Tokyo Electron, Ltd. (TEL) today announced the release of Precio, the company's next-generation, fully automatic 300mm wafer prober, designed to reduce overall test cell operating costs while providing maximum flexibility for the dynamic requirements of wafer testing.

Trends in the wafer testing market dictate that a variety of advanced prober capabilities be available to deal with fine pitch wafer processes, increasing functionality and content of devices, higher density of devices per wafer, and advances in packaging technologies.

Precio is a key milestone in TEL's ongoing effort to provide customers with innovative solutions to address these contact process challenges while improving cost-of-ownership.

Precio maintains TEL's tradition of industry-leading XY contact accuracy across temperature ranges while enabling precise Z contact accuracy and control to stabilize contact resistance. With the Precio wafer prober, TEL is also introducing two industry-firsts: TELPADS-I and Auto Leveling.

TELPADS-I is an advanced in-line probe mark inspection (PMI) technology based on the new off-line high speed PMI engine, TELPADS-O, released by TEL in June 2006. TELPADS-I allows users to achieve more than 60% improvement in PMI execution while collecting quantitative data for judgment and later analysis. Auto-leveling allows customers to automatically and accurately adjust the planarity between probe cards and the prober chuck. Control of probe card leveling can provide drastic improvements in the probe marks made on the wafer while improving yield through uniform contact resistance and better scrub margins. TEL's Auto Leveling option is an integrated function of the prober and does not require any external components or external control on the probe card or tester.

In the area of lowering test flow operating costs, Precio touts more than 50% improvement in wafer exchange time, allowing for major advances in test cell productivity and reduced labor costs. Precio is a highly modular wafer prober, providing customers with greater configuration flexibility and shortened lead times. This modularity reduces customers' test cell maintenance costs through better spares management and also enables on-site upgrades. Furthermore, with flexible loader configurations and increased functionality offered in a smaller footprint, the new system offers reduced overhead costs. Precio's support of GPAS, Switch Probe and Pearl Brush options allow customers to maximize probe card lifetime and eliminate the risk of operational damage to tooling.

"Through Precio's support of advanced options and a new modular design, we have created a probing solution that can truly help customers lower their test cell operating costs beyond the prober itself, while providing technology and throughput improvements to meet the probing challenges of next generation logic, memory and SOC devices," said Steve Nagasawa, general manager of TEL's Test Systems Business Unit.

TEL will begin accepting orders for Precio beginning in January 2007. To learn more about Precio, please visit us at Semicon Japan Booth 2D-1001.