A MFC Control Algorithm Based on Intelligent Control

The Mass Flow Controller(MFC) has become crucial in semiconductor manufacturing equipments. It is an important element because the quality and the yield of a semiconductor process are decided by the accurate flow control of gas. Therefore, the demand for the high speed and the highly accurate control of MFCs has been requested. It is hard to find an article of the control algorithm applied to MFCs. But, it is known that commercially available MFCs have PID control algorithms. Particularly, when the system detects the flow by way of heat transfer, MFC control problem contains the time delay and the nonlinearity. In this presentation, MFC control algorithm with the superior performance to the conventional PID algorithm is discussed and the superiority is demonstrated through the experiment. Fuzzy controller was utilized in order to compensate the nonlinearity and the time delay, and the performance is compared with that of a product currently available in the market. The control system, in this presentation, consists of a personal computer, the data acquisition board and the control algorithm carried out by LabWindows/CVI program on the PC. In addition, the method of estimating an actual flow from sensor output containing the time delay and the nonlinearity is presented. In conclusion, according to the result of the experiment, the proposed algorithm shows better accuracy and is faster than the conventional controller.