Abstract: The business climate of the integrated circuit industry in the 1990s is very different from that of the 1970s. Today's industry demands that manufacturers produce newer more complex designs with shrinking design time windows and high return on investment for fabrication facilities. This tighter business climate imposes stricter controls on the day to day operation of the fabrication process. Now, not only must new equipment make significant improvements in process capability but every effort must be made to ensure that older (already depreciated) equipment is used to its fullest. To this end, extensive work has been undertaken to establish sensor based manufacturing (SBM) schemes with the goal of improving wafer to wafer as well as within a wafer repeatability and extending equipment useful lifetime. This improvement in repeatability translates into reduced need for expensive, time consuming, in-line metrology. The end result is improve cycle time and reduced overall facility costs. This paper deals with the application of SBM concepts to establish the real- time monitoring of fundamental machine and plasma parameters known to have direct correlation to wafer results such as etch rate and uniformity. Proper usage of SBM generated information includes improved end point capabilities, real-time SPC, and 'go- no-go' decision analysis.!4
展开▼
