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Heterogeneous Integration Test System (HITS™)
Precision Without the Footprint
The Heterogeneous Integration Test System (HITS™) is a unified hybrid platform that integrates inspection, metrology, and wafer probing into a single, seamless workflow. By consolidating these critical functions, HITS™ eliminates the need for wafer transport between fragmented systems—significantly reducing test cycles, minimizing contamination risks, and lowering operational costs.The HITS™ platform integrates a powerful trifecta of test modes—Sheet Resistance (RS), Transistor Characterization, and Optical Defect Inspection—to establish a new standard for reliability and repeatability in semiconductor metrology. By unifying these functions, HITS™ ensures that data is not only collected faster but is grounded in physical accuracy and process consistency.
Integrated intelligence, unified insights
Inspection-Guided Sheet Resistance (RS) Metrology
Legacy sheet resistance metrology has reached a physical impasse in the era of sub-micron architectures. Traditional four-point probing systems are often too cumbersome for modern chip features, prone to damaging fragile thin films, and typically require weeks of “test-structure lithography” just to facilitate a single measurement. The HITS™ platform shatters these barriers by shrinking the hardware and digitizing the workflow. By leveraging MEMS-based fine-pitch probes, HITS™ enables direct-contact testing without the need for complex sample preparation or sacrificial test pads. As a semi-automatic system, it automates RS mapping across wafers up to 300mm, generating vast datasets to create high-resolution “heat maps” of sheet resistance—ensuring total process control and rapid yield feedback during manufacturing.
What sets the HITS™ platform apart is its integrated optical defect inspection, which serves as an intelligent guide for the probing process. By scanning the wafer surface in real-time, the system ensures that fine-pitch probe tips never land on surface particles, voids, or localized defects. This proactive safeguard not only protects sensitive MEMS hardware but also guarantees the reliability and repeatability of every measurement. By filtering out “false-fail” data caused by surface contaminants, HITS™ provides consistent, high-fidelity insights across even the most complex wafer surfaces, making it the industry’s definitive solution for advanced thin-film characterization.
Defect Inspection Heatmap
Micro-Sheet Resistance Heatmap
Fabrication-Free TFT Characterization
Traditional thin-film transistor (TFT) testing is a multi-day ordeal, historically requiring a complete lithography cycle—coating, baking, exposing, etching, and metal deposition—simply to establish source, drain, and gate contacts. Xallent shatters this bottleneck. By providing instantaneous electrical feedback, we accelerate the journey from material deposition to actionable data from days to minutes.
Utilizing the HITS™ platform and our proprietary fine-pitch probes, our technology interfaces directly with the thin film, allowing the probe tips themselves to function as the functional transistor contacts. This breakthrough completely bypasses the costly, time-intensive requirements of device fabrication, enabling the rapid validation of “pristine” materials in their native, uncontaminated state.
Fine-Pitch Four-Point Probes
The HITSTM leverages patented MEMS-based probes featuring pitches from 10 µm down to sub-1 µm for high-resolution probing. This allows for direct measurement on actual device features or extremely small “coupons,” eliminating the need for large, dedicated test pads. Because our probes are so precise, you can measure the sheet resistance of a “pristine” thin film directly after deposition. You no longer need to wait for a lithography cycle to create contact points. This reduces the time from material-in to data-out from days to mere minutes.
Applications
Unpatterned wafers
2D Flakes
Patterned wafers
Specifications
- Supports up to 300 mm wafers and pieces
- Vision system with sub-1 µm resolution
- Accepts fine pitch probe cards
- Autofocus and light intensity adjustment
- Utilizes control & feedback algorithms to bring probe tips into contact with wafer
- Leverages optical inspection data to guide electrical tests
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