• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• 제14권4호
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• pp.392-400
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• 2015

Monitoring of plasma etch processes for fault detection is one of the hallmark procedures in semiconductor manufacturing. Optical emission spectroscopy (OES) has been considered as a gold standard for modeling plasma etching processes for on-line diagnosis and monitoring. However, statistical quantitative methods for processing the OES data are still lacking. There is an urgent need for a statistical quantitative method to deal with high-dimensional OES data for improving the quality of etched wafers. Therefore, we propose a robust relevance vector machine (RRVM) for regression with statistical quantitative features for modeling etch rate and uniformity in plasma etch processes by using OES data. For effectively dealing with the OES data complexity, we identify seven statistical features for extraction from raw OES data by reducing the data dimensionality. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach is more suitable for high-accuracy monitoring of plasma etch responses obtained from OES.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• 제14권5호
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• pp.254-257
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• 2013

In-situ optical emission spectroscopy (OES) is employed for PECVD chamber monitoring. OES is used as an addon sensor to monitoring and cleaning end point detection (EPD). On monitoring plasma chemistry using OES, the process gas and by-product gas are simultaneously monitored. Principal component analysis (PCA) enhances the capability of end point detection using OES data. Through chamber cleaning monitoring using OES, cleaning time is reduced by 53%, in general. Therefore, the gas usage of fluorine is also reduced, so satisfying Green Fab challenge in semiconductor manufacturing.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• 제16권2호
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• pp.75-78
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• 2017

We reports improved monitoring performance of Self plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (SP-OES) by augmenting a by-pass tube to a conventional straight (or single) tube type self plasma reactor. SP-OES has been used as a tool for the monitoring of plasma chemistry indirectly in plasma process system. The benefits of SP-OES are low cost and easy installation, but some semiconductor industries who adopted commercialized SP-OES product experiencing less sensitivity and slow sensor response. OH out-gas chemistry monitoring was performed to have a direct comparison of a conventional single type tube and a by-pass type tube, and fluid dynamic simulation on the improved hardware design was also followed. It is observed faster pumping out of OH from the chamber in the by-pass type SP-OES.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• 제13권3호
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• pp.139-143
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• 2012

Optical emission spectroscopy (OES) is often used for real-time analysis of the plasma processes. OES has been suggested as a primary plasma process monitoring tool. It has the advantage of non-invasive in-situ monitoring capability but selecting the proper wavelengths for the analysis of OES data generally relies on empirically established methods. In this paper, we propose a practical method for the selection of OES wavelength peaks for the analysis of plasma etch process and this is done by investigating reactants and by-product gas species that reside in the plasma etch chamber. Wavelength selection criteria are based on the standard deviation and correlation coefficients. Moreover, chemical actinometry is employed for the normalization of the selected wavelengths. We also present the importance of chemical actinometry of OES data for quantitative analysis of plasma. Then, the suggested OES peak selection method is employed.. This method is used to find out the reason behind abnormal etching of PR erosion during a series of $SiO_2$ etch processes using the same recipe. From the experimental verification, we convinced that OES is not only capable for real-time detection of abnormal plasma process but it is also useful for the analysis of suspicious plasma behavior.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• 제19권4호
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• pp.541-547
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• 2015

In current semiconductor manufacturing, as the feature size of integrated circuit (IC) devices continuously shrinks, detecting endpoint in plasma etching process is more difficult than before. For endpoint detection, various kinds of sensors are installed in semiconductor manufacturing equipments, and sensor data are gathered with predefined sampling rate. Generally, detecting endpoint is performed using OES data of by-product. In this study, OES data of both by-product and etchant gas are used to improve reliability of endpoint detection. For the OES data pre-processing, a combination of Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA),are used. Polynomial Regression and Expanded Hidden Markov model (eHMM) technique are applied to pre-processed OES data to detect endpoint.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 한국진공학회 2012년도 제43회 하계 정기 학술대회 초록집
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• pp.257-257
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• 2012

Fault detection was carried out in a etcher of capacitive coupled plasma with OES (Optical Emission Spectroscopy) and impedance by VI probe that are widely used for process control and monitoring at semiconductor industry. The experiment was operated at conventional Ar and Fluorocarbon plasma with variable change such as pressure and addition of N2 and O2 to assume atmospheric leak, RF power and pressure that are highly possible to impact wafer yield during wafer process, in order to observe OES and VI Probe signals. The sensitivity change on OES and Impedance by VI probe was analyzed by statistical method including PCA to determine healthy of process. The main goal of this study is to find feasibility and limitation of OES and Impedances for fault detection by shift of plasma characteristics and to enhance capability of fault detection using PCA.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 한국진공학회 2012년도 제42회 동계 정기 학술대회 초록집
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• pp.499-499
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• 2012

This study was evaluated on etcher of capacitive coupled plasmas with OES (Optical Emission Spectroscopy) and impedance by VI probe that are widely used for process control and monitoring at semiconductor industry. The experiment was operated at conventional Ar and C4F8 plasma with variable change such as pressure and addition of gas (Atmospheric Leak: N2 and O2), RF, pressure, that are highly possible to impact wafer yield during wafer process, in order to observe OES and VI Probe signals. The sensitivity change on OES and Impedance by Vi probe was analyzed by statistical method to determine healthy of process. The main goal of this study is to understand unwanted tool performance to eventually improve productive capability. It is important for process engineers to actively adjust tool parameter before any serious problem occurs.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 한국정보처리학회 2023년도 추계학술발표대회
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• pp.341-344
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• 2023

건식 반도체 공정에서 저온플라즈마를 일정한 상태로 유지하는 것은 반도체 공정의 효율을 높이기 위해서 매우 중요한 문제이다. 그러나 저온플라즈마 반응로를 진공상태로 유지해야하기 때문에 플라즈마의 상태를 예측하는 작업은 매우 어렵다. 본 연구에서는 OES 센서에서 수집된 데이터를 이용하여 플라즈마의 상태를 예측하는 모형을 개발하였다. 질소가스를 이용한 플라즈마 반응로에서 15개의 서로 다른 플라즈마를 생성하여 OES 데이터를 수집하였고 15개 플라즈마의 상태를 분류할 수 있는 Gaussian Mixture Model(GMM)을 개발하였다. 총 7,296개 파장에서 측정된 분광강도(intensity)를 주성분분석(Pricipal Component Analysis)를 통해 2개의 주성분으로 차원 축소하여 GMM 모형을 개발하엿다. 모형의 정확도는 약 81.72%으로 플라즈마의 OES데이터에 대한 해석력은 뛰어났다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 한국진공학회 2009년도 제38회 동계학술대회 초록집
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• pp.464-464
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• 2010

A few years ago, for maintaining high stability and production yield of production equipment in a semiconductor fab, on-line monitoring of wafers is required, so that semiconductor manufacturers are investigating a software based process controlling scheme known as virtual metrology (VM). As semiconductor technology develops, the cost of fabrication tool/facility has reached its budget limit, and reducing metrology cost can obviously help to keep semiconductor manufacturing cost. By virtue of prediction, VM enables wafer-level control (or even down to site level), reduces within-lot variability, and increases process capability, $C_{pk}$. In this research, we have practiced VM on $SiO_2$ etch rate with optical emission spectroscopy(OES) data acquired in-situ while the process parameters are simultaneously correlated. To build process model of $SiO_2$ via, we first performed a series of etch runs according to the statistically designed experiment, called design of experiments (DOE). OES data are automatically logged with etch rate, and some OES spectra that correlated with $SiO_2$ etch rate is selected. Once the feature of OES data is selected, the preprocessed OES spectra is then used for in-situ sensor based VM modeling. ICP-RIE using 葰.56MHz, manufactured by Plasmart, Ltd. is employed in this experiment, and single fiber-optic attached for in-situ OES data acquisition. Before applying statistical feature selection, empirical feature selection of OES data is initially performed in order not to fall in a statistical misleading, which causes from random noise or large variation of insignificantly correlated responses with process itself. The accuracy of the proposed VM is still need to be developed in order to successfully replace the existing metrology, but it is no doubt that VM can support engineering decision of "go or not go" in the consecutive processing step.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• 제21권1호
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• pp.43-53
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• 2023

Sulfide concentrations critically affect worker safety and the integrities of underground facilities, such as deep geological repositories for spent nuclear fuel. Sulfide is highly sensitive to oxygen, which can oxidize sulfide to sulfate. This can hinder precise measurement of the sulfide concentration. Hence, a literature review was conducted, which revealed that two methods are commonly used: the methylene blue and sulfide ion-selective electrode (ISE) methods. Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES) was used for comparison with the two methods. The sulfide ISE method was found to be superior as it yielded results with a higher degree of accuracy and involved fewer procedures for quantification of the sulfide concentration in solution. ICP-OES results can be distorted significantly when sulfide is present in solution owing to the formation of H₂S gas in the ICP-OES nebulizer. Therefore, the ICP-OES must be used with caution when quantifying underground water to prevent any distortion in the measured results. The results also suggest important measures to avoid problems when using ICP-OES for site selection. Furthermore, the sulfide ISE method is useful in determining sulfide concentrations in the field to predict the lifetime of disposal canisters of spent nuclear fuel in deep geological repositories and other industries.