Process trace analytics for process development

Abstract

Analyses of unit process trace data are critical components of modern semiconductor manufacturing process control. While process development environments share many characteristics with manufacturing environments, development tools and processes may not be suitable candidates for the deployment of traditional trace analytics such as FDC applications. Here we describe the adaptive use of large scale, proactive process trace monitoring and reactive root cause analytics for supporting development operations. The large-scale monitoring application we have deployed is comprehensive in scope and scale and focusses on monitoring the stability of a chamber over time. The reactive root cause application we have deployed automatically searches large trace data spaces to identify trace data elements with potentially interesting relationships to variations in on-wafer measurements and is designed to handle the small sample sizes encountered frequently in development operations.