Top Research Lab Solves Measurement Challenge in Hours Despite Tight Security

A leading research and development (R&D) laboratory needed to make waferlevel measurements on its semiconductor device to keep its project on track. The team supplies products to government agencies to keep the world safe. It applies breakthrough science to solve tough engineering challenges and make state-ofthe-art products.

To stay on schedule and to budget, team members need to make measurements to prove their designs. However, one of the technology development teams working on a critical design needed help with new test equipment and software.

Organization:

• Leading research lab

Challenges:

• learning curve of new instrument and complex software

• online demo impossible under security protocols

• pressure to reach first measurement goal

Solutions:

• immediate access to experts who pooled their knowledge

• easy-to-follow, personalized, step-by-step instructions

Results:

• made required measurement that day

• avoided learning-related delays

• saved $500,000 in potential lost productivity

Challenges: Getting the Hardware and Software to Work Together

The R&D team purchased a new toolset so it could achieve its aggressive time-to-first-measurement goals with a Keysight E5080B ENA vector network analyzer (VNA) and WaferPro Express software. The E5080B is an integrated VNA that accelerates testing by combining an entire bench of equipment into one instrument. To speed the workflow, WaferPro Express offers a new user interface that makes it easy to set up and run complex, wafer-level test plans. The R&D team relied on this hardware and software toolset to work together to perform accurate and repeatable device and component characterization.

The learning curve of interfacing this new instrument and software raised questions, and the team could not make the necessary measurement.

Another concern: The lab is not a typical working environment. When keeping the world safe is your business, security is paramount, and standard business-tobusiness practices are not the norm. For example, security rules prohibit the use of videoconferencing.

Solution: KeysightCare Support Expertise

The research lab planned for this critical first measurement and purchased KeysightCare Software Support for WaferPro Express. Team members knew they would need technical support and software updates. So, when a question arose, the lead R&D engineer called Keysight and outlined the issue with the KeysightCare software expert. She identified the problem and confirmed that the VNA was not properly set up to interact correctly with the software. The issue was with the hardware, not the software.

The Keysight software expert contacted a colleague with VNA expertise. Because the E5080B VNA comes with KeysightCare Assured, the technical request jumped to the top of the queue, with a committed four-business-hour technical response. The product expert determined that changing the settings on the emulation mode interface of the network analyzer would fix the issue.

An online demo was not an option because of the tight security controls, so the two KeysightCare engineers documented the setup procedures. They used images and screen captures to document how to adjust the unit’s configuration settings so that the customer could follow step-by-step instructions. They emailed the instructions and placed them in the customer’s secure KeysightCare portal for future reference.