Patent ID: 7405584

Claim:
A prober for connecting each terminal of a tester to an electrode of a semiconductor device in order to inspect the semiconductor device formed on a wafer with the tester, the prober comprising: a probe card having a probe for connecting the electrode to the terminal of the tester by coming into contact with the electrode of the semiconductor device; a wafer stage for holding a wafer; a stage temperature adjustment mechanism for adjusting the temperature of the wafer stage to a predetermined temperature; a movement mechanism for moving the wafer stage; a movement control section for controlling the movement mechanism; and an alignment mechanism for carrying out an alignment operation to detect the position of the electrode of the semiconductor device of the wafer held by the wafer stage as well as detecting the position of the probe of the probe card to detect the relative position between the electrode of the semiconductor device and the probe, wherein; the movement control section controls the movement mechanism so that the electrode of the semiconductor device to be inspected is caused to come into contact with the probe based on the relative position detected by the alignment mechanism; and wherein the prober further comprises: a plurality of temperature sensors for detecting the temperatures of a plurality of portions of the prober including the wafer stage; and a predicted change amount calculation section for calculating the amount of change in relative position between the electrode of the semiconductor device and the probe based on a prediction model that uses at least part of the detected temperatures of the plurality of portions and the temperature difference between the wafer stage and the other sections as a variable.