As 2021 draws to a close, we wanted to look back on the year and share our most popular posts. All of us at FormFactor would like to thank our customers, partners, and employees for a great year. As we head into the holidays and the New Year be sure to be thankful for all you have and give to others where and when you can. Be safe wherever your travels may take you!

Here are our top 5 blogs from 2021:

  1. Testing VCSEL Devices On-Wafer

Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers, or VCSELs, are seeing unparalleled demand, thanks to new uses for them in smartphone and automotive applications. 3D sensing for facial recognition is the key application in smartphones, with up to three VCSEL dies being integrated into a single phone. Emerging automotive applications such as driver monitoring, infotainment control and LiDAR will provide an additional boost to the VCSEL market and sustain its continued growth. As 3D sensing, enabled by VCSELs, continues to find new applications, the technology we use on a regular basis will become securer, safer and smarter.

  1. New: Semiconductor Test and Measurement Webinar Series

We are excited to announce a new webinar series designed around semiconductor test strategies for handling the data explosion. The first two webinars are Delivering Advanced mm-Wave Load-Pull Measurements and Unattended RF Measurement and Calibration for 5G Device Characterization and More.

You can see these and other archived webinars here.

  1. New Integrated Measurement Systems from FormFactor and Keysight Technologies

FormFactor and Keysight Technologies now offer a new family of application-specific Integrated Measurement Systems (IMS), sold exclusively by FormFactor. This partnership of industry leaders delivers unmatched capabilities to meet today’s on-wafer test and measurement challenges, with the speed and security of comprehensive, proven solutions. These complete solutions are backed by expertise no other solutions provider can match – experience brought to you by the combination of the worldwide leader in R&D instrumentation and the worldwide leader in analytical probe systems.

  1. On-Demand Workshop: Continuous S-Parameter Measurements to 500 GHz

Now you can view FormFactor’s Gavin Fisher presentation on continuous S-parameter measurements to 500 GHz.  The content was originally presented as a MicroApps workshop at IMS2021.

Increased operation frequency of modern devices is pushing to higher extremes, which results in higher wafer testing frequencies as well. Engineers are being pushed beyond the limits of single sweep broadband coaxial measurements using a single set of probes, into one or more waveguide bands to cover the operating range of the device. Customers often ask us how well measurements correlate between the bands. In his presentation, Gavin shows measurements of the same device type with the same pitch from 200 MHz to 500 GHz, and optimization methods for the measurements and related calibration to achieve one continuous clean result.

  1. Eliminating 97% of Prober Environment Noise with PureLine 3 Technology

Compared with previous PureLine versions found in our Elite300 and CM300 probe stations, the new PureLine 3 eliminates 97% of the environmental noise, enabling 32x improvement in spectral noise performance. With this technology, highly accurate device performance can be measured on-wafer and used to generate device models for IC designers.

Using the new CM300xi-ULN probing system with PureLine 3 technology, device test engineers, reliability engineers and IC design engineers can all benefit from this latest technology. Accurate flicker, RTN, and phase noise measurements for advanced materials, package interconnects, transistors, and IC’s can now be done simply and automatically for faster time to data.

Thanks for a great year! Here’s to a great 2022 ahead!