The need of wafer inspection
Yes, indeed, uncompromised! The integral answer today is the quality and yield management. Wafer is the key pillar in the entire line chain of semiconductor industry. Wafer plays an important role at the initial stage of semiconductor long pipeline of process. Post wafer processing impact the entire final test yield and therefore costing.
The success and failure of the end product in the semiconductor industry depend on how well we handle, manage and inspect the wafer, henceforth better control of our die, sawing, assembly, probing, testing, visual, tape and reel and outgoing quality, making the KAIZEN and control to the best of quality and best of six sigma process.
Wafer defect inspection process system detects physical defects, those unwanted and those foreign substances called particles that might exist inside the wafer itself. It also inspects those pattern defects on wafers and obtains the position coordinates (X, Y) of the defects. In conclusion, all those defects can be divided into random defects and systematic defects. In even more details semiconductor higher wafer fabrication level, the wafer defects can be categorize into the four category such as :-
- random defect,
- repeatable defect,
- systematic defect,
- combinational defect.
Therefore the main questions that put to us today at the back end semiconductor manufacturing process are how to detect a potential wafer defects in order to prevent further damage to our entire chip eco-system.
Let me expose more to you here. Let us understand the entire evolution. In general, the vast majority of semiconductor assembly, the visual inspection process of the wafer surface depends on manual inspection by trained operator or technicians. For we know the inspection task requires extreme concentration, the time that an inspector can continue the task is quite limited, and still, it tends to be quite slow and inaccurate.
As integrated circuit feature sizes shrink, especially TSMC continue to venture into higher and higher technology. Therefore semiconductor processes become more complex, and new defect classes become yield limiters. The advancement of the wafer technology introduce hitherto unknown classes of surface defects. It has been estimated that up to 80% of the yield loss in the production of high-volume, very-large-scale integrated (VLSI) circuits can be attributed to random visual particle and pattern defects. Contamination particles that did not create problems with 1 μm design rules can now be categorized as main defects in our new era as critical dimensions dip below 0.18 μm.
Nowadays, due to the complexities of our wafer, some defects will result in improper electrical device functions, therefore fail the final testing and cause extreme yield lost. Also the increasing demands for miniaturization, high electrical performance and high I/O pin count has resulted in intensive research and development of advanced IC packages, which results in much critical inspection task. All these factors make our wafer inspection tougher and tougher everyday. It’s a real challenge for us to resolve this problem.
The continued progress in semiconductor manufacturing towards higher density devices and larger wafer formats is resulting in a greater need for automated inspection tools aw well as final goal of yield analysis tools. The increased application of automatic-based cum the image-based defect detection and inspection review machine for process monitoring and characterization is generating considerable amounts of data for evaluation by production personnel.
In this highly competitive world, final test yield, quality and end product results is of paramount important for survival. This data was necessary to evaluate the state of the manufacturing process and to ultimately improve product yield in a timely manner. Defect yield management tools are beginning to appear in the market, become more and more important for wafer defect and wafer inspection, tackle the problem right from the beginning.
Good news, big news for you. Come to us today, we have the complete solution for all your problem and hard-core issue. We furnish the most comprehensive solution for the wafer inspection via our cutting edge AOI machine and our AOI equipment. Fully automated, perfectly oriented for efficiency and smart manufactured for quality and durability.
