• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.464-464
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• 2010

A few years ago, for maintaining high stability and production yield of production equipment in a semiconductor fab, on-line monitoring of wafers is required, so that semiconductor manufacturers are investigating a software based process controlling scheme known as virtual metrology (VM). As semiconductor technology develops, the cost of fabrication tool/facility has reached its budget limit, and reducing metrology cost can obviously help to keep semiconductor manufacturing cost. By virtue of prediction, VM enables wafer-level control (or even down to site level), reduces within-lot variability, and increases process capability, $C_{pk}$. In this research, we have practiced VM on $SiO_2$ etch rate with optical emission spectroscopy(OES) data acquired in-situ while the process parameters are simultaneously correlated. To build process model of $SiO_2$ via, we first performed a series of etch runs according to the statistically designed experiment, called design of experiments (DOE). OES data are automatically logged with etch rate, and some OES spectra that correlated with $SiO_2$ etch rate is selected. Once the feature of OES data is selected, the preprocessed OES spectra is then used for in-situ sensor based VM modeling. ICP-RIE using 葰.56MHz, manufactured by Plasmart, Ltd. is employed in this experiment, and single fiber-optic attached for in-situ OES data acquisition. Before applying statistical feature selection, empirical feature selection of OES data is initially performed in order not to fall in a statistical misleading, which causes from random noise or large variation of insignificantly correlated responses with process itself. The accuracy of the proposed VM is still need to be developed in order to successfully replace the existing metrology, but it is no doubt that VM can support engineering decision of "go or not go" in the consecutive processing step.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.292-299
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• 2013

The measurement in the manufacturing process of curved ship hull plates still depends on wooden templates as a standard instrument. The metrology-enabled automation in the shipbuilding process has been challenged instead of line measurement with wooden templates. The developed measurement system consists of a CCD camera, multiple structured laser sources and 3-DOF motion device. The system carries out measurement of curved profiles for large scale plates by an optical triangulation method. The results of experiment conducted in a manufacturing shop demonstrate the accurate and robust performance.

• International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.51-54
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• 2008

A novel stereolithography method using evanescent light has been proposed as a means to realize 100-nanometer resolution. An in-process measurement system with high accuracy has been introduced to the nanostereolithography apparatus. Specifically, an optical microscopic system was developed to monitor the exposure process and a confocal positioning system was established to improve the longitudinal positioning accuracy in the layer-by-layer process. A high-power objective lens, a tube lens, and a charge coupled device (CCD) were included in the optical microscopic system, whereas a laser, a high-power objective lens, a piezoelectric (PZT) stage, a condenser lens, a pinhole, and a photomultiplier (PMT) made up the confocal microscopic system. Two verification experiments were conducted, and the results indicated that the optical microscopic system had a horizontal resolution of 200 nm and that the confocal positioning system provided a depth resolution of 30.8 nm. These results indicate that nanostereolithography can be successfully performed with this system.

• International Journal of Vascular Biomedical Engineering
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.25-30
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• 2006

We intended to measure the IT, MT, and the IMT of carotid artery separately and tried to analyze the clinical significance. Two hundred and fifty consecutive patients (125 males, 125 females) underwent carotid artery scanning using high-resolution ultrasound. The images were off-line analyzed using B-mode ultrasound image processing, devised in our research. We measured the IT, MT, and IMT semi-automatically at the far wall of designated 1cm length of the right common carotid and calculated the average values over the 200 points. The IT (p < 0.05), MT (p < 0.05) as well as IMT (p < 0.01) of patients with atherosclerotic disease were significantly thicker than that of the patients without atherosclerotic disease. Patients with hypertension showed significantly thicker IT (p < 0.05), MT (p < 0.01), and IMT (p < 0.01) than that of the patients without hypertension. However, only IT was thicker in patients with smoking (p < 0.05) than that of the patients without smoking. Smoking was associated only with intima while hypertension was associated with the all three layer's thickness. This result suggests the atherosclerotic process can be different by cardiovascular risk factors.