APPLICATIONS IN INTEGRATED CIRCUIT (IC) MANUFACTURING

The manufacture of integrated circuits is driven by a demand for faster calculation capabilities and lower costs, which will require the development of a new generation of manufacturing tools to increase yield productivity, spearheaded by improved measurement devices and advanced process control and the necessary engineering support. The objectives of this paper are to motivate work in this field through a review of the challenges and the state-of-the-art in two main PSE areas as applied to microelectronics manufacturing: process control and process monitoring. PSE solutions appropriate for these challenges involve harnessing multivariate statistics, automated modeling approaches like genetic programming, and multivariable model-based control. The paper is illustrated with several example applications, including one currently under testing at Tower Semiconductor Ltd., a foundry for integrated circuit manufacturing in Israel