On-line control of product uniformity for quality improvement

품질향상을 위한 제품 균일성의 On-Line 제어

In off-line process optimization, process parameters are controlled such that the process is robust against changes in equipment conditions and incoming materials. The off-line methods, however, are not effective when the changes are so large that process parameters need to be adjusted. On-line control can respond to such large changes, but process uniformity has not been controlled on-line due to the difficulties in modeling. This paper is aimed at developing a new on-line control methodology where the uniformity is controlled effectively. The process variability is categorized based on the physical considerations, and the process parameters are classi- fied considering their effects on the categorized process variabilities. On-line control is performed with the properly selected process parameters so that robustness may not be degraded. The developed methodology is applied to the single wafer plasma etching processes, which resulted in both higher within-a-wafer uniformity and compens- ation of the incoming material non-uniformity.