The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 06, 2021
Filed:
Mar. 22, 2019
Formfactor, Inc., Livermore, CA (US);
January Kister, Portola Valley, CA (US);
Chun-Chih Wang, San Jose, CA (US);
FormFactor, Inc., Livermore, CA (US);
Abstract
A skate on a tip of a probe for testing electrical devices is a reduced thickness probe tip contact. Such a skate can advantageously increase contact pressure, but it can also undesirably reduce probe lifetime due to rapid mechanical wear of the skate. Here multilayer skate probes are provided where the overall shape of the probe tip is a smooth curved surface, as opposed to the conventional fin-like skate configuration. The skate layer is the most mechanically wear-resistant layer in the structure, so abrasive processing of the probe tip leads to a probe skate defined by the skate layer. The resulting probes provide the advantage of increased contact pressure without the disadvantage of reduced lifetime.