• 반도체디스플레이기술학회지
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• 제9권3호
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• pp.47-51
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• 2010

This paper presents a wafer pre-alignment system which is improved using the image of the entire wafer area. In the previous method, image acquisition for wafer takes about 80% of total pre-alignment time. The proposed system uses only one image of entire wafer area via a high-resolution CMOS camera, and so image acquisition accounts for nearly 1% of total process time. The larger FOV(field of view) to use the image of the entire wafer area worsen camera lens distortion. A camera calibration using high order polynomials is used for accurate lens distortion correction. And template matching is used to find a correct notch's position. The performance of the proposed system was demonstrated by experiments of wafer center alignment and notch alignment.

• 반도체디스플레이기술학회지
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• 제9권1호
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• pp.11-16
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• 2010

Wafer Pre-Alignment is to find the center and the orientation of a wafer and to move the wafer to the desired position and orientation. In this paper, an area camera based pre-aligning method is presented that captures 8 wafer images regularly during 360 degrees rotation. From the images, wafer edge positions are extracted and used to estimate the wafer's center and orientation using least squares circle fitting. These data are utilized for the proper alignment of the wafer. For accurate alignments, camera calibration methods using high order polynomials are used for converting pixel coordinates into real-world coordinates. A complete pre-alignment system was constructed using mechanical and optical components and tested. Experimental results show that alignment of wafer center and orientation can be done with the standard deviation of 0.002 mm and 0.028 degree, respectively.

• 반도체디스플레이기술학회지
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• 제22권4호
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• pp.108-112
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• 2023

Precision manufacturing technology is rapidly developing due to the extreme miniaturization of semiconductor processes to comply with Moore's Law. Accurate and precise alignment, which is one of the key elements of the semiconductor pre-process and post-process, is very important in the semiconductor process. The center detection of wafer align marks plays a key role in improving yield by reducing defects and research on accurate detection methods for this is necessary. Methods for accurate alignment using traditional image sensors can cause problems due to changes in image brightness and noise. To solve this problem, engineers must go directly into the line and perform maintenance work. This paper emphasizes that the development of AI technology can provide innovative solutions in the semiconductor process as high-resolution image and image processing technology also develops. This study proposes a new wafer center detection method through variable thresholding. And this study introduces a method for detecting the center that is less sensitive to the brightness of LEDs by utilizing a high-performance object detection model such as YOLOv8 without relying on existing algorithms. Through this, we aim to enable precise wafer focus detection using artificial intelligence.