The ramp up to finer chip circuitry patterning technology has its advantages and disadvantages. The more advanced design rule technology allows chipmakers to produce faster, higher-performance chips out of a silicon wafer at lower costs. This, however, leaves them with challenges like how to detect and filter out microscopic defects as well as wafer and photo mask impurity particle contamination, thus risking to compromise yield. This challenge helps explain why chipmakers are spending more money than before on implementing measuring and inspection equipment.
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