1. INTRODUCTION

The Rifle NVM system and the device under test (D.U.T.) are connected together by means of a dedicated board (Test Head). Usually this board has a socket to house the chip under test and/or some dedicated connectors for the prober cabling. This way Rifle can be used to test:
- Test chips
- Commercial chips
- Devices on the wafer (by means of a prober)

Active Technologies develops the test head following the customer specifications and provides customized solutions to optimize the interconnection between Rifle and the D.U.T. For this reason, Active Technologies provides two kind of test heads:
- Passive test head
- Active Test Head

1.1 Passive Test Head
The passive test head is a board with a socket and/or some connectors. The board is developed by using the signal integrity and high speed digital design criteria to achieve the best connection between the Rifle system and the D.U.T. Multilayer printed circuit boards, ground planes and matched wires are usually used in the test head development.

1.2 Active Test Head
If the D.U.T. requires additional digital and/or analog resources, Active Technologies can provide to the customer dedicated solutions. A list of some Active Test Heads is available for a “ready to go” solution.

1.2.1 PR02 ACTIVE TEST HEAD (External PMU plus)

The PR02 test head is a board developed to connect the Rifle resources to a prober; each signal has a 50 ohm matched connection.
The board provides two high speed current measurement units, two high voltage output channels and a series of standards 100mils pitch connectors for the prober cabling. For the test of packaged devices an additional add-on card with a socket is available.

The features of the current measurement units are the following:
- Sampling rate : 80 MSPS (12.5 ns time resolution)
- Settling time : 20 ns
- Two full scales : 100 A, 500 A
- Precision : +/- 5A measurement time < 80ns ; +/- 0.5A measurement time < 400ns ;

The features of the high voltage output channels are the following:
- Output voltage range : +/- 18V (100mV step)
- Output current : 150mA max.
- Settling time : 2 s max.

1.2.2 PR03 Active test head (External PMU nano board)

The PR03 Active test head is a dedicated board designed to measure under threshold currents. The PR03 connections are the same as the PR02.
This test head has two current measurement units with the following features:
- Sampling rate : 50 KSPS (20 s time resolution)
- Settling Time : 3 s
- Full scales: the board has two full scales with the following options :
Option 1 : range 5 A, precision +/-20nA
range 25 A, precision +/-100nA
Option 2 : range 1.5 A, precision +/-7.5nA
range 7.5 A, precision +/-75nA

1.2.3 PR04 Active Test Head (External sense amplifier)

The PR04 Active Test Head has 16 external sense amplifiers and provides the right solution if the D.U.T doesn’t have internal sense amplifiers or if its sense amplifiers are damaged. This board has a socket to test packaged devices and a connector system for the prober cabling.
The speed of the external sense amplifiers depends on the DUT biasing conditions and on the chip capacitance. In a standard configuration with 1Kohms pull-up resistors, 1Kohms sense resistors and 50pF pin capacitance the settling time is about 200ns.

1.2.4 PR05 Active test head (External PMU nano board)

The PR05 test head is a board developed to connect the Rifle resources to a prober; each signal has a 50 ohm matched connection.
The board provides two high speed current measurement units, two high voltage output channels and a series of standards 100mils pitch connectors for the prober cabling. For the test of packaged devices an additional add-on card with a socket is available.

The features of the current measurement units are the following:
- Sampling rate : 10 MSPS (100 ns time resolution)
- Settling time : 10 s
- Two full scales : 5 A, 50 A
- Precision : +/-5 nA

The features of the high voltage output channels are the following:
- Output voltage range : +/- 32V
- Settling time : < 4 s max (0 - 30V input box applied)