• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.114-118
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• 2009

PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) brush cleaning method is a typical cleaning method for semiconductor cleaning process especially post-CMP cleaning. PVA brush contacts with the wafer surface and abrasive particle, generating the contact rotational torque of the brush, which is the removal mechanism. The brush rotational torque can overcome theoretically the adhesion force generated between the abrasive particle and wafer by zeta potential. However, after CMP (chemical mechanical polishing) process, many particles remained on the wafer because the brush was contaminated in previous post-CMP cleaning step. The abrasive particle on the brush redeposits to the wafer. The level of the brush contamination increased according to the cleaning run time. After cleaning the brush, the level of wafer contamination dramatically decreased. Therefore, the brush cleanliness effect on the cleaning performance and it is important for the brush to be maintained clearly.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.55-59
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• 2024

Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PE-CVD) is a widely used technology in semiconductor manufacturing for thin film deposition. The implementation of wafer guide rings in PE-CVD processes is crucial for enhancing efficiency and product quality by ensuring uniform deposition around wafer edges and reducing particle generation. On the other hand, to prevent overall temperature non-uniformity and degradation of thin film quality within the chamber, it is essential to consider various parameters comprehensively. In this study, after applying the wafer guide rings, temperature variations and fluid flow changes were simulated. Additionally, by simulating the temperature and flow changes when applied to the PE-CVD chamber, this paper discusses the importance of optimizing variables within the entire chamber.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.506-516
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• 1998

In this paper, an algorithm is proposed to detect the malfunction of plasma-etching characteristics using EPD signal trajectories. EPD signal trajectories offer many information on plasma-etching process state, so they must be considered as the most important data sets to predict the wafer states in plasma-etching process. A recent work has shown that EPD signal trajectories were successfully incorporated into process modeling through critical parameter extraction, but this method consumes much effort and time. So Principal component analysis(PCA) can be applied. PCA is the linear transformation algorithm which converts correlated high-dimensional data sets to uncorrelated low-dimensional data sets. Based on this reason neural network model can improve its performance and convergence speed when it uses the features which are extracted from raw EPD signals by PCA. Wafer-state variables, Critical Dimension(CD) and uniformity can be estimated by simulation using neural network model into which EPD signals are incorporated. After CD and uniformity values are predicted, proposed algorithm determines whether malfunction values are produced or not. If malfunction values arise, the etching process is stopped immediately. As a result, through simulation, we can keep the abnormal state of etching process from propagating into the next run. All the procedures of this algorithm can be performed on-line, i.e. wafer to wafer.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.51-56
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• 2022

Recently, the demand for semiconductors is expanded to various industries, and the use of high-quality and high-performance chips is increasing. With the trend, the diameter magnification and high integration of the semiconductor wafers are mandatory. As a result, there is a growing demand for the productivity improvement and the surface precision. There have been many studies on the stabilization of the wafer manufacturing processes in order to satisfy those specifications. Many complaints have been appealed by the wafer buyers that there are many unacceptable wafers with surface defects and foreign material adhesion which are caused by the vibrations during transportation. This study intends to derive the material improvement of the packing box of the wafers to suppress the vibrations of the box, and eventually to reduce the surface defects and the foreign material adhesion. The result shows that optimal material can substantially decrease the vibration of the packing box.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.54-54
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• 2009

Ag thick film has been used for electrode materials with the excellent conductivity. Ag electrode is used in screen-printed silicon solar cells as a electrode material. Compared to photolithography and buried-contact technology, screen-printing technology has the merit of fabricating low-priced cells and enormous cells in a few hours. Ag paste consists of Ag powders, vehicles and additives such as frits, metal powders (Pb, Bi, Zn). Frits accelerate the sintering of Ag powders and induce the connection between Ag electrode and Si wafer. Thermophysical properties of frits and reactions among Ag, frits and Si influence on cell performance. In this study, Ag pastes were fabricated with adding different kinds of frits. After Ag pastes were printed on silicon wafer by screen-printing technology, the cells were fired using a belt furnace. The cell parameters were measured by light I-V to determine the short-circuit current, open-circuit voltage, FF and cell efficiency. In order to study the relationship between the reactivity of Ag, frit, Si and the electrical properties of cells, the reaction of frits and Si wafer on was studied with thermal properties of frits. The interface structure between Ag electrode and Si wafer were also measured for understanding the reactivity of Ag, frit and Si wafer. The excessive reactivity of Ag, frit and Si wafer certainly degraded the electrical properties of cells. These preliminary studies suggest that reactions among Ag, frits and Si wafer should optimally be controlled for cell performances.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.90-98
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• 2004

Nano/micro-scale studies on friction properties were conducted on Si (100) and three self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) (PFOTC, DMDM, DPDM) coated on Si-wafer by chemical vapor deposition technique. Experiments were conducted at ambient temperature $(24{\pm}1^{\circ}C)$ and humidity $(45{\pm}5\%)$. Nano-friction was evaluated using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) in the range of 0-40nN normal loads. In both Si-wafer and SAMs, friction increased linearly as a function of applied normal load. Results showed that friction was affected by the inherent adhesion in Si-wafer, and in the case of SAMs the physical/chemical structures had a major influence. Coefficient of friction of these test samples was also evaluated at the micro-scale using a micro-tribotester. It was observed that SAMs had superior frictional property due to their low interfacial energies. In order to study of the effect of contact area on friction coefficient at the micro-scale, friction was measured for Si-wafer and DPDM against Soda Lime balls (Duke Scientific Corporation) of different radii 0.25 mm, 0.5 mm and 1 mm at different applied normal loads $(1500,\;3000\;and\;4800{\mu}N)$. Results showed that Si-wafer had higher friction coefficient than DPDM. Furthermore, unlike that in the case of DPDM, friction was severely influenced by wear in the case of Si-wafer. SEM evidences showed that solid-solid adhesion to be the wear mechanism in Si-wafer.

• Clean Technology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.43-50
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• 2012

Cleaning procedure of solar silicon wafer, following ingot sawing process in solar cell production is studied. Types of solar silicon wafer can be divided into monocrystalline or multicrystalline, and slurry sawn wafer or diamond sawn wafer according to the ingot growing methods and the sawing methods, respectively. Wafer surface and contaminants can vary with these methods. The characterisitics of contaminants and wafer surface are investigated for each cleaning substrate, and appropriate cleaning agents are developed. Physical properties and cleaning ability of the cleaning agents are evaluated in order to verify the application in the industry. The wafers cleaned with the cleaning agents do not show any residual contaminants when analyzed by XPS and regular patterns are formed after texturization. Furthermore, the cleaning agents are applied in the production industry, which shows superior cleaning results compared to the existing cleaning agents.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.163-169
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• 2010

Novel wafer-level fabrication of a glass ball-lens is realized for optoelectronic applications. A Pyrex wafer is bonded to a silicon wafer and cross-cut into a square-tile pattern, followed by wet-etching of the underlying silicon. Cubes of Pyrex on the undercut silicon are then turned into ball shapes by thermal reflow, and separated from the wafer by further etching of the silicon support. Radial variation and surface roughness are measured to be less than ${\pm}3\;{\mu}m$ and ${\pm}1\;nm$, respectively, for ball diameter of about $500\;{\mu}m$. A surface defect on the ball that is due to the silicon support is shown to be healed by using a silicon-optical-bench. Optical power-relay of the ball lens showed the maximum efficiency of 65% between two single-mode fibers on the silicon-optical-bench.

• IE interfaces
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2004

In a modern semiconductor device manufacturing industry, statistical bin limits on wafer level test bin data are used for minimizing value added to defective product as well as protecting end customers from potential quality and reliability excursion. Most wafer level test bin data show skewed distributions. By Monte Carlo simulation, this paper evaluates methods and sample size effect regarding determination of statistical bin limits. In the simulation, it is assumed that wafer level test bin data follow the Poisson distribution. Hence, typical shapes of the data distribution can be specified in terms of the distribution's parameter. This study examines three different methods; 1) percentile based methodology; 2) data transformation; and 3) Poisson model fitting. The mean square error is adopted as a performance measure for each simulation scenario. Then, a case study is presented. Results show that the percentile and transformation based methods give more stable statistical bin limits associated with the real dataset. However, with highly skewed distributions, the transformation based method should be used with caution in determining statistical bin limits. When the data are well fitted to a certain probability distribution, the model fitting approach can be used in the determination. As for the sample size effect, the mean square error seems to reduce exponentially according to the sample size.

• Journal of ILASS-Korea
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.185-190
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• 2007

There is a growing interest to develop a new cleaning technology to overcome the disadvantages of wet cleaning technologies such as environmental pollution and the cleaning difficulty of contaminants on integrated circuits. Laser cleaning is a potential technology to remove various pollutants on a wafer surface. However, there is no fundamental data about cleaning efficiencies and cleaning mechanisms of contaminants on a wafer surface using a laser cleaning technology. Therefore, the cleaning characteristics of a wafer surface using an excimer laser were investigated in this study. Fingerprint consisting of inorganic and organic materials was chosen as a representative of pollutants and the effectiveness of a laser irradiation on a wafer cleaning has been investigated qualitatively and quantitatively. The results have shown that cleaning degree is proportional to the laser irradiation time and repetition rate, and quantitative analysis conducted by an image processing method also have shown the same trend. Furthermore, the cleaning efficiency of a wafer contaminated by fingerprint strongly depended on a photothermal cleaning mechanism and the species were removed in order of hydrophilic and hydrophobic contaminants by laser irradiation.