“We are very excited to join SEMATECH in this groundbreaking research at the UAlbany NanoCollege,” said Alex Oscilowski, Chief Operating Officer at Rudolph. “This is a truly unique opportunity for collaboration, with some of the best minds in the industry using a cutting-edge technology platform in the world’s most advanced research complex.”

The initial IPC program will look at a range of issues, including the metrology of thin films and metal gate stacks; wafer front, back, and edge macro defect inspection; inspection and metrology for through silicon vias (TSV) and three-dimensional integrated circuits (3DIC); immersion lithography process characterization; process modeling and optimization for yield enhancement; and automatic defect classification (ADC).

“The integration of advanced hardware and intelligent analytical software will be the key to meeting these challenges,” he stated, “and we’re looking forward to contributing our experience, front-end to back-end throughout the manufacturing process, and our broad expertise in metrology, inspection and data analysis technologies, to this important joint effort,” said Oscilowski.
 
The program is also expected to establish cost-of-ownership criteria within each project that will allow CoO benchmarking.