ISMI provides 'real life' semiconductor equipment productivity solutions for mature fabs

ALBANY, USA: In order to address key productivity and cost issues associated with semiconductor manufacturing, ISMI is hosting the 2011 Equipment Productivity Forum, a series of nine workshops that explore 'real life' equipment solutions for wafer fabs.

In order to meet greater cost demands, fabrication engineers are increasingly being challenged to manage ongoing problems associated with the availability of parts and long lead times for near obsolete and fully obsolete fabrication equipment. Innovations in equipment, materials, and processes are an important part of any continuous improvement effort for an optimum and improved product cycle time.

Recognizing the challenges faced by semiconductor companies with mature fabs, ISMI launched a Mature Technology Fabs program in 2010. The program provides a suite of Equipment Productivity Forum workshops that bring engineers, engineering managers, and alternate parts and service suppliers together to discuss common problems, and identify new working solutions for chip manufacturers through collaboration across the entire industry.

As a part of ISMI’s Equipment Productivity Forum, two separate workshops on Thermal and CVD equipment were held in April and May. During these workshops industry equipment experts presented their unique perspectives on key productivity and cost issues associated with their specific semiconductor equipment.

Through sharing real fab experiences, including best-known-methods, participants generated a total of 140 new learning items (“Golden Nuggets”) and delivered viable new solutions for LPCVD, ALD, epitaxy, furnace, HiPOx, RTP, and CVD fab equipment, including:

* Examination of preventive maintenance (PM) and particle performance of their shallow trench isolation processes and tools.
* Discovery of an effective defect reducing die yield improvement for legacy Fab equipment that also reduces unscheduled downtime, non-product wafer qualifications, improves first time right PM procedures, and is a best known method applicable to all fab equipment, regardless of wafer size.
* A tutorial presentation on the topic of plasma damage aimed at educating process engineers about the possible effects that their tools can have on device performance, reliability, and yields.
* The use of thermal imagers to diagnose temperature related problems in the fab, for example, liquid source line cold spots, overheating pumps, and finger-printing the thermal profile of tools.
* The industry’s first innovation on edge inspection for identifying edge chipping that leads to thermal breakage in subsequent processing.
* Ranked critical issues which were shared between device manufacturers and relevant OEMs.