On-Wafer Probe Station for Microwave Metrology at the Nanoscale

A new generation of instrumentation is developed to address the challenge of on-wafer measurement of nanodevices in the microwave regime. The system proposed is built up with a vector network analyzer, a scanning electron microscope and home-made miniaturized ground-signal-ground (GSG) probes fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology and mounted on nano-positionners. A first generation of probing structures with contact sizes of 1 mu m(2) have been designed, fabricated and characterized up to 40 GHz.