Electrical connection apparatus

DETAILED DESCRIPTION An electrical connection apparatus according to the invention includes a lattice having a plurality of openings arranged in each of the X- and Y-directions intersecting with each other, and a probe sheet including a plurality of probe elements of which each has a contact portion and is provided in each of the above openings.
The probe sheet is arranged on one surface side of the lattice such that the contact portion is positioned so as to correspond to the opening.
Furthermore, the probe sheet is divided into a plurality of probe regions which are separated from each other by one or more boundary portions defined between adjacent opening regions each including one or more openings.
When performing the electrical test on a flat plate-shaped object (referred to as "test-object" hereinafter) like an IC chip formed on the semiconductor wafer, the contact portion of each probe element is pressed on the corresponding electrode of the test-object and then the predetermined voltage and current are supplied thereto.
When performing a heating test such as a burn-in test or an electrical test on a plurality of test-objects at the same time, the probe sheet comes to show the thermal expansion because of the temperature rise in the ambience, the semiconductor wafer, and the probe element itself.
In the electrical connection apparatus according to the invention, however, since the probe sheet is divided into a plurality of probe regions which are partitioned from each other by portions corresponding to the boundaries of each opening region, the thermal expansion of each probe element gives no influence to other probe elements adjacent thereto.
Also, since the contact portion of the probe element is located so as to correspond to the opening of the lattice, the probe element, especially the relative positional relation of its contact portion, in its turn the relative positional relation of the contact portion against the electrode of the test-object is hardly influenced by the thermal expansion of the probe region