• 대한산업공학회지
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• 제35권4호
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• pp.266-279
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• 2009

This paper focuses on the problem of scheduling wafer lots with limited waiting times between pairs of consecutive operations in a semiconductor wafer fabrication facility. For the problem of minimizing total tardiness of orders, we develop a priority rule based scheduling method in which a scheduling decision for an operation is made based on the states of workstations for the operation and its successor or predecessor operation. To evaluate performance of the suggested scheduling method, we perform simulation experiments using real factory data as well as randomly generated data sets. Results of the simulation experiments show that the suggested method performs better than a method suggested in other research and the one that has been used in practice.

• 한국산업보건학회지
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• 제26권1호
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• pp.1-10
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• 2016

Objectives: The aim of this study is to review the results of exposure to chemicals and to extremely low frequency(ELF) magnetic fields generated in wafer fabrication operations in the semiconductor industry. Methods: Exposure assessment studies of silicon wafer fab operations in the semiconductor industry were collected through an extensive literature review of articles reported until the end of 2015. The key words used in the literature search were "semiconductor industry", "wafer fab", "silicon wafer", and "clean room," both singly and in combination. Literature reporting on airborne chemicals and extremely low frequency(ELF) magnetic fields were collected and reviewed. Results and Conclusions: Major airborne hazardous agents assessed were several organic solvents and ethylene glycol ethers from Photolithography, arsenic from ion implantation and extremely low frequency magnetic fields from the overall fabrication processes. Most exposures to chemicals reported were found to be far below permissible exposure limits(PEL) (10% < PEL). Most of these results were from operators who handled processes in a well-controlled environment. In conclusion, we found a lack of results on exposure to hazardous agents, including chemicals and radiation, which are insufficient for use in the estimation of past exposure. The results we reviewed should be applied with great caution to associate chronic health effects.

• 한국산업보건학회지
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• 제22권1호
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• pp.9-19
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• 2012

Objectives: The aim of this study is to critically review the exposure surrogates and estimates used to associate health effects in wafer fabrication workers such as spontaneous abortion and cancer, as well as to identify the limitations of retrospective exposure assessment methods Methods: Epidemiologic and exposure-assessment studies of wafer fabrication operations in the semiconductor industry were collected. Retrospective exposure-assessment methods used in cancer risk and mortality and reproductive toxicity were reviewed. Results: Eight epidemiologic papers and two reports compared cancer risk among workers in wafer fabrication facilities in the semiconductor industry with the risk of the general population. Exposure surrogates used in those cancer studies were fabrication(vs. non-fabrication), employment duration, manufacturing eras, job title (operator vs. maintenance worker) and qualitative classifications of agents without assessing specific agent or job-specific exposure. In contrast, specific operation, job title and agents were used to classify the exposure of fabrication workers, contributing to finding a significant association with spontaneous abortion (SAB). Conclusion: Further epidemiologic studies of fabrication workers using more refined exposure assessment methods are warranted in order to examine the associations between fabrication work, environment, and specific agents with cancer risk or mortality as used in SAB epidemiologic studies.

• 대한기계학회논문집A
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• 제29권11호
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• pp.1463-1471
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• 2005

This paper proposes an agent-based scheduling method fur semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities with hard inter-operation temporal constraints. The scheduling problem is to find the feasible schedules that guarantee both logical and temporal correctness. A proposed multi-agent based architecture is composed of scheduling agents, workcell agents, and machine agents. A scheduling agent computes optimal schedules through bidding mechanisms with a subset or entire set of the workcell agents. A dynamic planning-based approach is adopted for the scheduling mechanism so that the dynamic behaviors such as aperiodic job arrivals and reconfiguration can be taken into consideration.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.47-53
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• 2005

The efficiency of fabrication (fab) operation is one of the key factors in order for a semiconductor manufacturing company to stay competitive. Optimization of manpower and forecasting manpower needs in a modern fab is an essential part of the future strategic planing and a very important to the operational efficiency. As the semiconductor manufacturing technology has entered the 8-inch wafer era, the complexity of fab operation increases with the increase of wafer size. The wafer handling method has evolved from manual mode in 6-inch wafer fab to semi-automated or fully automated factory in 8-inch and 12-inch wafer fab. The distribution of manpower requirement in each specialty varied as the trend of fab operation goes for downsizing manpower with automation and outsourcing maintenance work. This paper is to study the specialty distribution of manpower from the requirement in a typical 6-inch, 8-inch to 12-inch wafer fab. The human resource planning in today’s fab operation shall consider many factors, which include the stability of technical talents. This empirical study mainly focuses on the human resource planning, the manpower distribution of specialty structure and the forecast model of internal demand/supply in current semiconductor manufacturing company. Considering the market fluctuation with the demand of varied products and the advance in process technology, the study is to design a headcount forecast model based on current manpower planning for direct labour (DL) and indirect labour (IDL) in Taiwan’s fab. The model can be used to forecast the future manpower requirement on each specialty for the strategic planning of human resource to serve the development of the industry.

• 반도체디스플레이기술학회지
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• 제1권1호
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• pp.9-13
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• 2002

A polyimide-type electrostatic chuck (ESC) was fabricated for the application of holding 8-inch silicon wafers in the oxide etching equipment. For the fabrication of the unipolar ESC, core technologies such as coating of polyimide films and anodizing treatment of aluminum surface were developed. The polyimide films were prepared on top of thin coated copper substrates for the good electrical contacts, and the helium gas cooling technique was used for the temperature uniformity of the silicon wafers. The ESC was essentially working with an unipolar operation, which was easier to fabricate and operate compared to a bipolar operation. The chucking force of the ESC has been measured to be about 580 gf when the applied voltage was 1.5 kV, which was considered to be enough force to hold wafers during the dry etching processing. The employment of the ESC in etcher system could make 8% enhancement of the wafer processing yield.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• 제9권3호
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• pp.249-256
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• 2018

This article aims to provide a systematic review of the exposure assessment methods used to assign wafer fabrication (fab) workers in epidemiologic cohort studies of mortality from all causes and various cancers. Epidemiologic and exposure-assessment studies of silicon wafer fab operations in the semiconductor industry were collected through an extensive literature review of articles reported until 2017. The studies found various outcomes possibly linked to fab operations, but a clear association with the chemicals in the process was not found, possibly because of exposure assessment methodology. No study used a tiered assessment approach to identify similar exposure groups that incorporated manufacturing era, facility, fab environment, operation, job and level of exposure to individual hazardous agents. Further epidemiologic studies of fab workers are warranted with more refined exposure assessment methods incorporating both operation and job title and hazardous agents to examine the associations with cancer risk or mortality.

• 산업경영시스템학회지
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• 제35권1호
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• pp.79-86
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• 2012

This study focuses on the problem of scheduling wafer lots of several recipe(operation condition) types in the photolithography workstation in a semiconductor wafer fabrication facility, and sequence-dependent recipe set up times may be required at the photolithography machines. In addition, a lot is able to be operated at a machine when the reticle(mask) corresponding to the recipe type is set up in the photolithography machine. We suggest various heuristic algorithms, in which developed recipe selection rules and lot selection rules are used to generate reasonable schedules to minimizing the total weighted flowtime. Results of computational tests on randomly generated test problems show that the suggested algorithms outperform a scheduling method used in a real manufacturing system in terms of the total weighted flowtime of the wafer lots with ready times.

• 대한기계학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한기계학회 2004년도 추계학술대회
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• pp.1196-1200
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• 2004

Micropump is very useful component in micro/nano fluidics and bioMEMS applications. In this study, a bubble-powered micropump was fabricated and tested. The micropump consists of two-parallel micro line heaters, a pair of nozzle-diffuser flow controller and a 1 mm in diameter, 400 ${\mu}m$ in depth pumping chamber. The two-parallel micro line heaters with 20 ${\mu}m-width$ and 200 ${\mu}m-length$ were fabricated to be embedded in the silicon dioxide layer of a wafer which serves as a base plate for the micropump. The pumping chamber, the pair of nozzle-diffuser unit and microchannels including the liquid inlet and outlet port were fabricated by etching through another silicon wafer. A glass wafer (thickness of $525{\pm}15$ ${\mu}m$) having two holes of inlet and outlet ports of liquid serve as upper plate of the pump. Finally the silicon wafer of the base plate, the silicon wafer of pumping chamber and the glass wafer were aligned and bonded (Si-Si bonding and anodic bonding). A sequential photograph of bubble nucleation, growth and collapse was visualized by CCD camera. Clearly liquid flow through the nozzle during the period of bubble growth and slight back flow of liquid at the end of collapsing period can be seen. The mass flow rate was found to be dependent on the duty ratio and the operation frequency. As duty ratio increases, flow rate decreases gradually when the duty ratio exceeds 60%. Also as the operation frequency increases, the flow rate of the micropump decreases slightly.

• 소성∙가공
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• 제15권1호
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• pp.9-14
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• 2006

In the present research, the simultaneous punching of ultra small size hole of $2\~10\;{\mu}m$ in diameter on flat rolled thin metal foils was conducted with elastic polymer punch. Workpiece used in the present investigation were the rolled pure copper of $3{\mu}m$ in thickness and CP titanium of 1.5fm in thickness. The metal foils were punched with the dies and arrays of circular and rectangular holes were made. The process set-up is similar to that of the flexible rubber pad farming or Guerin process. Arrays of holes were punched successfully in one step forming. The punched holes were examined in terms of their dimensions. The effects of the wafer die hole dimension and heat treatment of the workpiece on ultra small size hole formation of the thin foil were discussed. The process condition such as proper die shape, pressure, pressure rate and diameter-thickness ratio (d/t) were also discussed. The results in this paper show that the present method can be successfully applied to the fabrication of ultra small size hole away in a one step operation.