AEM Afore Wafer Level Test Solutions

Established in 1995, Afore Oy is an industry pioneer and provider of application-specific test solutions for MEMS and semiconductor devices based in Finland. Since 2018, the company belongs to AEM Holdings, Singapore, benefiting from the global presence of the corporation. “Afore Oy is now becoming AEM Afore Wafer Level Test Solutions, the part of AEM specializing in the development of customer specific wafer level final and system test solutions for environmental and motion sensors, as well as other semiconductor devices,” says Chandran Nair, CEO of AEM.

He goes on to mention that chips are becoming more complex, and companies are moving towards heterogeneous packaging, where a single package has multi-node IP blocks. Therefore, the ability to thoroughly test complex products is crucial. The shrinking device and package sizes bring about many challenges in Final Test and calibration of complex devices with demanding test requirements. To this end, AEM focuses on customer-specific testing needs and provides application-specific test solutions for each purpose. This enables not only cost-efficient test solutions but also opens opportunities for process optimization and reduction of Cost of Test.

AEM provides the capability to test and calibrate MEMS sensors in wafer-level packages. Given that the company’s solutions are based on a wafer probing platform rather than pick and place technology, shrinking device sizes are not a concern. In addition, there is no tooling needed for the handling of new devices. Both advantages combined bring product flexibility today, the freedom that the systems will be capable of handling tomorrow’s devices, and an attractive Cost of Test. “Our mission is to provide the most comprehensive semiconductor and electronics test solutions based on best-in-class technologies, processes, and customer support,” states Vesa Henttonen, the CTO of AEM Afore Wafer Level Test Solutions. “Our key differentiation is that we work closely with our customers to develop application specific test and handling solutions that meet their needs in a scalable manner from lab to production.”

As an example, AEM has enabled a process that cuts time to market for devices encapsulated in vacuum packages. “We assisted a customer by offering a wafer probing system that allows device test in a vacuum environment. Products can be tested at wafer level. Before encapsulation, but still at the same environment as in the device’s regular vacuum package,” says Ari Kuukkala, the General Manager of AEM Afore Wafer Level Test Solutions. The traditional approach would have been to package a limited number of dies individually in ceramic packages, which is slow and costly and therefore done typically only for a couple hundred dies on wafer as samples. With AEM’s approach, the customer can probe the entire wafers and gain statistical data from tens of thousands of devices with minimum effort.

What further differentiates AEM is its global presence. “We are currently working on expanding our offering into solutions for other types of sensors and semiconductor devices. We are also expanding our market share within the existing solutions for environmental and inertial sensors,” mentions Nair. With such a focus on innovation, AEM achieved its highest revenue year on record last year despite the pandemic.

Currently, AEM has accelerated the development of new capabilities to its systems. Leveraging AEM’s worldwide presence, the company can now offer global support for its highperformance MEMS test solutions. AEM’s global manufacturing and supply chain also enables Afore Wafer Level Test Solutions to take advantage of production efficiencies as its business scales.