| Mitsuhiro Matsuda | Structure Development Dept., Semiconductor Equipment System Lab., |
| Toshimitsu Miyata | Structure Development Dept., Semiconductor Equipment System Lab., |
| Masakazu Shimada | Structure Development Dept., Semiconductor Equipment System Lab., |
| Tomoji Watanabe | 6th Dept., Mechanical Engineering Research Lab., |
In the semiconductor manufacturing field, APC (advanced process control) has just started to be used in a portion of semiconductor manufacturing. To accomplish device manufacturing below 100 nm, a stable thermal process is required, such as the one that eliminates wafer-to-wafer, batch-to-batch, and furnace-to-furnace differences. Equipment condition monitoring ability also has been improved; therefore, predictive and preventive maintenances are required. Reducing furnace startup time and manufacturing in small lots at batch type furnaces are necessary to use furnaces more effectively. Hitachi has developed an APC system for the semiconductor thermal process that (1) reduces thickness differences from wafer to wafer and (2) batch to batch; (3) detects abnormal furnace conditions at an early stage; (4) reduces equipment startup time; and (5) reduces process parameter modification time when the number of product wafers is changed.
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Hitachi Kokusai Electric Inc. |
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The Hitachi Hyoron (Japanese Only) |
APC, FDC, integrated metrology, dummy wafer reduction
