Non-product patterned particle test wafer and testing method therefor

摘要

A method for testing a semiconductor wafer processing step. An overlying electrical structure is created on a bare wafer to form a test wafer which simulates the surface contours of production wafers that will be exposed to the tested processing step. The overlying electrical structure of the test wafer is created using the same processing steps are used in manufacturing the overlying electrical structures of production wafers. Although the test wafers have the same surface contour as the production wafers they simulate, the test wafers are less expensive to manufacture because the test wafers do not include any underlying layers found in the production wafers which are not exposed during the tested processing step, and therefore the steps which form these layers can be omitted when making test wafers.