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Monday, April 23, 2012

#ALGORITHMS: "Wafer inspection gets smart"

By adding intelligent parallel processing, KLA-Tencor Corp. (Milpitas, Calif.) has increased the throughput of its wafer inspection and metrology tool by as much as four times.


KLA-Tencor's Concurrent Inspection and Reveiw CLuster (CIRCL) can detected front-side defects (right) then trigger back-side detection (left) to find assciated defects (circled).

Called CIRCL for Concurrent Inspection and Review CLuster, the lithography review and outgoing quality control (OQC) system uses embedded intelligence to monitor the front side and if defects are found, also monitor the back side and edge of a wafer for defects too, while simultaneously measuring the wafer edge profile, edge bead concentricity and macro overlay error. In addition, two lots can be simultaneously monitored in parallel, potentially quadrupling overall throughput.
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