• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 제어로봇시스템학회 1989년도 한국자동제어학술회의논문집; Seoul, Korea; 27-28 Oct. 1989
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• pp.421-426
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• 1989

Many of semiconductor manufacturing companies persuit automation of wafer fabrication to improve the yields and quality of their products. Development of real-time control system for wafer fabrication and wafer/cassette automatic transfer-system is the most important part to achieve the purpose. In this paper, SECS protocol proposed by SEMI is briefly reviewed and an implementation method of real-time monitoring and control system is suggested as one of the possible ways for wafer fabrication automation. The system consists of process equipments supporting SECS.

• 한국시뮬레이션학회논문지
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• 제8권3호
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• pp.49-66
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• 1999

Semiconductor wafer fabrication is known to be one of the most complex manufacturing processes due to process intricacy, random yields, product diversity, and rapid changing technologies. In this study we are concerned with the impact of lot release and dispatching policies on the performance of semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities. We consider several semiconductor wafer fabrication environments according to the machine failure types such as no failure, normal MTBF, bottleneck with low MTBF, high randomness, and high MTBF cases. Lot release rules to be considered are Deterministic, Poisson process, WR(Workload Regulation), SA(Starvation Avoidance), and Multi-SA. These rules are combined with several dispatching rules such as FIFO (First In First Out), SRPT (Shortest Remaining Processing Time), and NING/M(smallest Number In Next Queue per Machine). We applied the combined policies to each of semiconductor wafer fabrication environments. These policies are assessed in terms of throughput and flow time. Basically Weins fabrication setup was used to make the simulation models. The simulation parameters were obtained through the preliminary simulation experiments. The key results throughout the simulation experiments is that Multi-SA and SA are the most robust rules, which give mostly good performance for any wafer fabrication environments when used with any dispatching rules. The more important result is that for each of wafer fabrication environments there exist the best and worst choices of lot release and dispatching policies. For example, the Poisson release rule results in the least throughput and largest flow time without regard to failure types and dispatching rules.

• 산업기술연구
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• 제43권1호
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• pp.49-55
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• 2023

Cluster tools are extensively employed in various wafer fabrication processes within the semiconductor manufacturing industry, including photo lithography, etching, and chemical vapor deposition. Contemporary fabrication facilities encounter customer orders with technical specifications that are similar yet slightly varied. Consequently, modern fabrications concurrently manufacture two or three different wafer types using a cluster tool to maximize chamber utilization and streamline the flow of wafer lots between different process stages. In this review, we introduce two methods of concurrent processing of multiple wafer types: 1) concurrent processing of multiple wafer types with different job flows, 2) concurrent processing of multiple wafer types with identical job flows. We describe relevant research trends and achievements and discuss future research directions.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 제어로봇시스템학회 1988년도 한국자동제어학술회의논문집(국내학술편); 한국전력공사연수원, 서울; 21-22 Oct. 1988
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• pp.401-406
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• 1988

Various types and huge volume of information such as process instructions, work-in process and parametric data are created in a wafer fabrication process and should be provided to personnels inside or outside the facility. This article describes design criteria and functional description on the information system for small-scale wafer fabrication process to accomplish paperless fab and to support efficient fab management.

• 산업공학
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• 제16권3호
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• pp.344-351
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• 2003

Critical dimension is one of the most important characteristics of up-to-date integrated circuit devices. Hence, critical dimension control in a semiconductor wafer fabrication process is inevitable in order to achieve optimum device yield as well as electrically specified functions. Currently, in complex semiconductor wafer fabrication processes, statistical methodologies such as Shewhart-type control charts become crucial tools for practitioners. Meanwhile, given a critical dimension sampling plan, the analysis of variance technique can be more effective to investigating critical dimension variation, especially for on-chip and on-wafer variation. In this paper, relating to a typical sampling plan, linear statistical models are presented for the analysis of critical dimension variation. A case study is illustrated regarding a semiconductor wafer fabrication process.

• 한국시뮬레이션학회논문지
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.51-57
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• 2006

현재 반도체 산업은 200mm 웨이퍼에서 300mm 웨이퍼 공정으로 기술이 변화하고 있다. 300mm 웨이퍼 제조업체들은 Fabrication Line (FAB Line) 자동화를 비용절감 실현의 방책으로 사용하고 있다. 또한 기술의 확산, 시장 경쟁력의 격화 등으로 생산성 향상에 의한 원가절감이 반도체 산업 성장의 근본요인이 되고 있다. 대부분의 반도체 업체들은 생산성을 높이기 위해 average cycle time을 줄이는데 총력을 기울이고 있다. 본 논문에서는 average cycle time을 줄이는 데 중점을 두고, 300mm 반도체 제조공정을 시뮬레이션 하였다.

• 대한산업공학회지
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• 제29권2호
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• pp.179-189
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• 2003

Gate poly-silicon critical dimension is a prime characteristic of a metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor. It is important to achieve the uniformity of gate poly-silicon critical dimension in order that a semiconductor device has acceptable electrical test characteristics as well as a semiconductor wafer fabrication process has a competitive net-die-per-wafer yield. However, on gate poly-silicon critical dimension, the complexity associated with a semiconductor wafer fabrication process entails hierarchical variance components according to run-to-run, wafer-to-wafer and even die-to-die production unit changes. Specifically, estimates of the hierarchical variance components are required not only for disclosing dominant sources of the variation but also for testing the wafer-level uniformity. In this paper, two experimental designs, a two-stage nested design and a randomized complete block design are considered in order to estimate the hierarchical variance components. Since gate poly-silicon critical dimensions are collected from fixed die positions within wafers, a factor representing die positions can be regarded as fixed in linear statistical models for the designs. In this context, the two-stage nested design also checks the wafer-level uniformity taking all sampled runs into account. In more detail, using variance estimates derived from randomized complete block designs, Duncan's multiple range test examines the wafer-level uniformity for each run. Consequently, a framework presented in this study could provide guidelines to practitioners on estimating the hierarchical variance components and testing the wafer-level uniformity in parallel for any characteristics concerned in semiconductor wafer fabrication processes. Statistical analysis is illustrated for an experimental dataset from a real pilot semiconductor wafer fabrication process.

• 산업경영시스템학회지
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• 제39권1호
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• pp.73-80
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• 2016

This study focuses on the formation of input release lots in a semiconductor wafer fabrication facility. After the order-lot pegging process assigns lots in the fab to orders and calculates the required quantity of wafers for each product type to meet customers' orders, the decisions on the formation of input release lots should be made to minimize the production costs of the release lots. Since the number of lots being processed in the wafer fab directly is related to the productivity of the wafer fab, the input lot formation is crucial process to reduce the production costs as well as to improve the efficiency of the wafer fab. Here, the input lot formation occurs before every shift begins in the semiconductor wafer fab. When input quantities (of wafers) for product types are given from results of the order-lot pegging process, lots to be released into the wafer fab should be formed satisfying the lot size requirements. Here, the production cost of a homogeneous lot of the same type of product is less than that of a heterogeneous lot that will be split into the number of lots according to their product types after passing the branch point during the wafer fabrication process. Also, more production cost occurs if a lot becomes more heterogeneous. We developed a multi-dimensional dynamic programming algorithm for the input lot formation problem and showed how to apply the algorithm to solve the problem optimally with an example problem instance. It is necessary to reduce the number of states at each stage in the DP algorithm for practical use. Also, we can apply the proposed DP algorithm together with lot release rules such as CONWIP and UNIFORM.

• 한국정밀공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국정밀공학회 2005년도 춘계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.1140-1144
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• 2005

A plastic-based CE (capillary electrophoresis) microchip was fabricated by hot embossing process. A Si mold was made by wet etching process and a PMMA wafer was cut off from 1mm thick PMMA sheet. A micro-channel structure on PMMA substrate was produced by hot embossing process using the Si mold and the PMMA wafer. A vacuum assisted thermal bonding procedure was employed to seal an imprinted PMMA wafer and a blank PMMA wafer. The results of microscopic cross sectional images showed dimensions of channels were well preserved during thermal bonding process. In our procedure, the deformation amount of bonding process was below 1%. The entire fabrication process may be very useful for plastic based microchip systems.

• International Journal of Quality Innovation
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• 제8권2호
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• pp.132-146
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• 2007

Constructing an effective production control policy is the most important issue in wafer fabrication factories. Most of researches focus on the input regulations of wafer fabrication. Although many of these policies have been proven to be effective for wafer fabrication manufacturing, in practical, there is a need to help operators decide which lots should be pulled in the right time and to develop a systematic way to alleviate the long queues at the bottleneck workstation. The purpose of this study is to construct a photolithography workstation dispatching rule (PADR). This dispatching rule considers several characteristics of wafer fabrication and influential factors. Then utilize the weights and threshold values to design a hierarchical priority rule. A simulation model is also constructed to demonstrate the effect of the PADR dispatching rule. The PADR performs better in throughput, yield rate, and mean cycle time than FIFO (First-In-First-Out) and SPT (Shortest Process Time).