Enhanced Interconnect Medium Simplifies Test & Verification

By Ila Pal, Ironwood Electronics, Inc.

In high performance embedded systems test application, the requirement for accurate measurement of AC and DC parameter is often critical. During development phase, IC devices are not permanently attached to the target board. Instead IC devices are connected via interconnect medium to the target board. The spring probe is one of the typical interconnect medium. Spring probes have to be compressed to certain height for making reliable electrical connection. Since the IC devices are not perfectly planar, each of the spring probes can be compressed to different height which causes variation in the electrical resistance for each signal path [3]. This variation causes signal transmission to fail sometimes and the process needs to be repeated by re-seating the IC device. This paper will discuss a new feature added to the spring probe providing electrical resistance within 2-3 milliohms irrespective of the compression height. This enhanced feature allows system developers to test & verify without multiple intervention. Presentation will specifically address electrical resistance over multiple cycles and other high performance characteristics of the interconnect medium.