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FRED LAKHANI, International SEMATECH, Austin, Texas, USA KENNETH W. TOBIN & THOMAS P. KARNOWSKI, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, USA

ABSTRACT

In a leading edge integrated circuit (IC) fabricator, large amounts of manufacturing data is collected,analysed, and applied to design new processes, control and maintain tools, and to provide the information needed for rapid yield learning and prediction. ADC has been developed to provide automation of the tedious manual inspection processes associated with defect review. Although significant advances have been achieved in the capabilities of ADC systems today, concerns continue to persist regarding the effective deployment of commercial ADC technologies. During 2001, International SEMATECH (ISMT) and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) performed an industry survey of eight major semiconductor device manufacturers to address the issues of ADC integration, usability, and maintenance for the various in-line inspection and review applications available today. In this paper, we will provide an overview of the results of the ADC survey.