Semiconductor International, March 2008

"Quickly identifying and correcting yield-robbing problems is critical to profitable semiconductor manufacturing. To help achieve this goal, manufacturers are using increasingly sophisticated measurement, inspection and test systems to monitor the hundreds of process steps required to build IC devices. These systems gather wafer data and flag major process excursions, but they can miss more subtle defects that, over time, substantially affect yield. Intelligent mining of the enormous amount of available data is needed to speed problem identification and improve root-cause analysis (RCA). Automated spatial pattern recognition (SPR), which identifies clusters of defects on the wafer, can provide a solution. However, to be effective, SPR technology must be fast, accurate, scalable and have the capability to process multiple data types from various sources.

AMD worked with Rudolph Technologies to develop and deploy an advanced SPR system. The challenges encountered and advantages gained are discussed here."

View the full online article