• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.267-274
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• 2015

In the semiconductor manufacturing post-FAB process, predicting a package test result accurately in the wafer testing phase is a key element to ensure the competitiveness of companies. The prediction of package test can reduce unnecessary inspection time and expense. However, an analysing method is not sufficient to analyze data collected at wafer testing phase. Therefore, many companies have been using a summary information such as a mean, weighted sum and variance, and the summarized data reduces a prediction accuracy. In the paper, we propose an analysis method for Wafer Map Image collected at wafer testing process and conduct an experiment using real data.

• Journal of Applied Reliability
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.26-31
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• 2016

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of grinding process and thickness on the fracture strength of silicon die used for semiconductor substrate. Method: Silicon wafers with different thickness from $200{\mu}m$ to $50{\mu}m$ were prepared by chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) and dicing before grinding (DBG) process, respectively. Fracture load was measured by point load test for 50 silicon dies per each wafer. Results: Fracture strength at the center area was lower than that at the edge area of the wafer fabricated by DBG process, while random distribution of the fracture strength was observed for the CMPed wafer. Average fracture strength of DBGed specimens was higher than that of the CMPed ones for the same thickness of wafer. Conclusion: DBG process can be more helpful for lowering fracture probability during the semiconductor fabrication process than CMP process.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.5 no.1 s.14
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• pp.5-11
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• 2006

One of the most important is to insure that a new circuit design is qualified far release before it is scheduled for manufacturing, test, assembly and delivery. Due to various causes, there happens to be a low yield in the wafer process. Wafer test is a critical process in analyzing the chip characteristics in the EDS(electric die sorting) using analytic tools -wafer map, wafer summary and datalog. In this paper, we propose new analytic map algorithms for DDI chip test data. Using the proposed analytic map algorithms, we expect to improve the yield, quality and analysis time.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.433-433
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• 2012

As the requirement in patterning geometry continuously shrinks down, the termination of etch process at the exact time became crucial for the success in nano patterning technology. By virtue of real-time optical emission spectroscopy (OES), etch end point detection (EPD) technique continuously develops; however, it also faced with difficulty in low open ratio etching, typically in self aligned contact (SAC) and one cylinder contact (OCS), because of very small amount of optical emission from by-product gas species in the bulk plasma glow discharge. In developing etching process, one may observe that coupon test is being performed. It consumes costs and time for preparing the patterned sample wafers every test in priority, so the coupon wafer test instead of the whole patterned wafer is beneficial for testing and developing etch process condition. We also can observe that etch open area is varied with the number of coupons on a dummy wafer. However, this can be a misleading in OES study. If the coupon wafer test are monitored using OES, we can conjecture the endpoint by experienced method, but considering by data, the materials for residual area by being etched open area are needed to consider. In this research, we compare and analysis the OES data for coupon wafer test results for monitoring about the conditions that the areas except the patterns on the coupon wafers for real-time process monitoring. In this research, we compared two cases, first one is etching the coupon wafers attached on the carrier wafer that is covered by the photoresist, and other case is etching the coupon wafers on the chuck. For comparing the emission intensity, we chose the four chemical species (SiF2, N2, CO, CN), and for comparing the etched profile, measured by scanning electron microscope (SEM). In addition, we adopted the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm for analyzing the chose OES data patterns, and analysis the covariance and coefficient for statistical method. After the result, coupon wafers are over-etched for without carrier wafer groups, while with carrier wafer groups are under-etched. And the CN emission intensity has significant difference compare with OES raw data. Based on these results, it necessary to reasonable analysis of the OES data to adopt the pre-data processing and algorithms, and the result will influence the reliability for relation of coupon wafer test and whole wafer test.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.29 no.2
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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.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.107-113
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• 2024

Scheduling of semiconductor test facilities has been crucial since effective scheduling contributes to the profits of semiconductor enterprises and enhances the quality of semiconductor products. This study aims to solve the scheduling problems for the wafer burn-in test facilities of the semiconductor back-end process by utilizing simulation and deep reinforcement learning-based methods. To solve the scheduling problem considered in this study. we propose novel state, action, and reward designs based on the Markov decision process. Furthermore, a neural network is trained by employing the recent RL-based method, named proximal policy optimization. Experimental results showed that the proposed method outperformed traditional heuristic-based scheduling techniques, achieving a higher due date compliance rate of jobs in terms of total job completion time.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.30-34
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• 2009

A Sand blasting technology has been used to address via and trench processing of glass wafer of optic semiconductor packaging. Manufactured sand blast that is controlled by blast nozzle and servomotor so that 8" wafer processing may be available. 10mm sq test device manufactured by Dry Film Resist (DFR) pattern process on 8" glass wafer of $500{\mu}m's$ thickness. Based on particle pressure and the wafer transfer speed, etch rate, mask erosion, and vertical trench slope have been analyzed. Perfect 500 um tooling has been performed at 0.3 MPa pressure and 100 rpm wafer speed. It is particle pressure that influence in processing depth and the transfer speed did not influence.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.353-360
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• 2012

As semiconductor device technology continuously shrinks, low-open area etch process prevails in front-end etch process, such as contact etch as well as one cylindrical storage (OCS) etch. To eliminate over loaded wafer processing test, it is commonly performed to emply diced small coupons at stage of initiative process development. In nominal etch condition, etch responses of whole wafer test and coupon test may be regarded to provide similar results; however, optical emission spectroscopy (OES) which is frequently utilize to monitor etch chemistry inside the chamber cannot be regarded as the same, especially etch mask is not the same material with wafer chuck. In this experiment, we compared OES data acquired from two cases of etch experiments; one with coupon etch tests mounted on photoresist coated wafer and the other with coupons only on the chuck. We observed different behaviors of OES data from the two sets of experiment, and the analytical results showed that careful investigation should be taken place in OES study, especially in coupon size etch.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.13-17
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• 2014

Since the semiconductor manufacturing requires the silicon wafers with extraordinary degree of surface flatness, the surface polishing of wafers from ingot cutting is an important process for deciding surface quality of wafers. The present study introduces the development of wafer polishing equipment and, especially, the wafer polishing head that employs the forced self-driving of installed silicon wafer as well as the wax wafer mounting technique. A series of wafer polishing tests have been carried out to investigate the effects of self-driving function in wafer polishing head. The test results for wafer planarization showed that the LLS counts and SBIR of polished wafer surfaces were generally improved by adopting the self-driven polishing head in wafer polishing stations.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 1999.05a
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• pp.211-213
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• 1999

In this paper, we documented the controlling oxide removal amount on the pattern wafer using removal rate and removal thickness of blanket wafer. There was the strong correlation relationship for both(correlation factor:0.7109). So, we could confirm the repeatability as applying for STI CMP process from the obtained linear formular. As the result of repeatability test, the difference of calculated polishing time and actual polishing time was 3.48 seconds based on total 50 lots. If this time is converted into the thickness, it is from 104$\AA$ to 167$\AA$. It is possible to be ignored because it is under the process margin.