Process Control Investments Support Technology, Cut Costs

摘要

As IC manufacturing processes have grown complex, so have the hardware and software tools that monitor them. Techniques previously dismissed as expensive research toys, like spectroscop-ic ellipsometry, are routinely used for thin-film metrology. Neural networks, multivariate statistics packages, and automatic classification schemes augment the spreadsheets formerly used to manage process data. Once engineers identify yield issues and potential process improvements, run-to-run control, recipe feedback and feed forward, and similar software tools can implement and monitor desired process changes.