Cleaning contactor pins by laser

Abstract

In semiconductor final electrical testing manufacturing, the contactor pin is very important component as to make a contact between leads of devices to test hardware circuits. The contactor pins are made from metal alloy material which provide a good electrical conductive. In daily test manufacturing, the contactor pins may be up to several thousand contacting insertions, which will collect of many dust at their tips of contactor pins. The classic traditional cleaning of the contactor pins typically use abrasive cleaning, such as brush. In this research, we present the using of laser application to clean the contactor pins with Laser cleaning machine IMT model 600MV with Nd:YAG laser type. The optimized parameter setting up on the laser cleaning machine are studied with varies of number of pulse shot between 2-4 pulses, distance between the tip of contactor between 2-4 inches and energy of the Laser beam between 15-250 mJ/pulse. The cantilever contact pin type of majority used in one of IC Test manufacturing have been put into the evaluation. The testing of the cleaning effects is performed by optical power scope and scanning electron microscopy, including the analysis of metallic pin surface impacted was done by the EDX analyses. The parameters for cleaning effectiveness and safe cleaning of pins corrosion in metallic surface were determined.