2.6-GHz RF inductive power delivery for contactless on-wafer characterization

This paper presents the critical components of a contactless IC testing infrastructure to power on-chip characterization circuits. This includes an inductively-coupled, contactless power delivery system implemented on a 90 nm CMOS technology using 150 mum times 150 mum on-chip and off-chip spiral inductors, low loss rectifiers and on-chip voltage regulators to create a constant and repeatable 1-V, 8.5-mW DC source. We present the measured process variation of ring oscillator test circuits in contrast to the on-chip voltage source variation to demonstrate the feasibility of process variation analysis using this system.

[1]  Martin Margala,et al.  Design of wireless on-wafer submicron characterization system , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems.

[2]  Mohamad Sawan,et al.  Bidirectional high data rate transmission interface for inductively powered devices , 2003, CCECE 2003 - Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering. Toward a Caring and Humane Technology (Cat. No.03CH37436).

[3]  K. Sakui,et al.  A CMOS bandgap reference circuit with sub-1-V operation , 1999 .

[4]  Selahattin Sayil,et al.  Comparison of contactless measurement and testing techniques to a all-silicon optical test and characterization method , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.

[5]  J. Vickers,et al.  First Look at Across-chip Performance Variation Using Non-Contact, Performance-Based Metrology , 2006, The 17th Annual SEMI/IEEE ASMC 2006 Conference.

[6]  Mohamad Sawan,et al.  High power efficiency inductive link with full-duplex data communication , 2002, 9th International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems.

[7]  Lin Fu,et al.  Noncontact wafer probe using wireless probe cards , 2005, IEEE International Conference on Test, 2005..

[8]  F. Zhang,et al.  Design of Components and Circuits Underneath Integrated Inductors , 2006, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[9]  M. Ketchen,et al.  Ring oscillator based technique for measuring variability statistics , 2006, 2006 IEEE International Conference on Microelectronic Test Structures.