• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.35 no.1
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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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.1156-1163
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• 2006

본 논문은 Overhead Hoist Transport(OHT)를 운반 장비로 사용하는 반도체 생산 라인 자동물류시스템에서의 차량배차문제를 다룬다. 고려하는 반도체 라인은 18 개의 bay 와 6 개의 stoker 로 구성되며 160 대 이상의 OHT를 가진다. 자동물류시스템은 최소한의 OHT 대수로 하루 100,000 건의 웨이퍼를 이동시켜야 하며 반송시간과 편차를 최소화하여야 한다. 전통적인 차량배차규칙에서는 차량이 어떤 작업에 할당되면 그 관계가 변하지 않는 반면, 본 연구에서는 시스템 상황의 변화에 따라 차량을 작업에 재할당하는 방법을 제안한다. 시뮬레이션을 통해 제안된 방법을 shortest travel distance first 규칙과 비교한 결과, 필요한 OHT 대수, 반송시간과 반송시간의 편차 측면에서 획기적인 효용성 향상을 보였다.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.280-288
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• 2016

Microelectronic product consumers may already be expecting another paradigm shift with smarter phones over smart phones, but the current status of microelectronic manufacturing engineering education (MMEE) in universities hardly makes up the pace for such a fast moving technology paradigm shift. The purpose of MMEE is to educate four-year university graduates to work in the microelectronics industry with up-to-date knowledge and self-motivation. In this paper, we present a comprehensive curriculum for a four-year university degree program in the area of microelectronics manufacturing. Three hands-on experienced-based courses are proposed, along with a methodology for undergraduate students to acquire hands-on experience, towards integrated circuits (ICs) design, fabrication and packaging, are presented in consideration of manufacturing engineering education. Semiconductor device and circuit design course for junior level is designed to cover how designed circuits progress to micro-fabrication by practicing full customization of the layout of digital circuits. Hands-on experienced-based semiconductor fabrication courses are composed to enhance students’ motivation to participate in self-motivated semiconductor fab activities by performing a series of collaborations. Finally, the Microelectronics Packaging course provides greater possibilities of mastered skillsets in the area of microelectronics manufacturing with the fabrication of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and board level assembly for microprocessor applications. The evaluation of the presented comprehensive curriculum was performed with a students’ survey. All the students responded with “Strongly Agree” or “Agree” for the manufacturing related courses. Through the development and application of the presented curriculum for the past six years, we are convinced that students’ confidence in obtaining their desired jobs or choosing higher degrees in the area of microelectronics manufacturing was increased. We confirmed that the hypothesis on the inclusion of handson experience-based courses for MMEE is beneficial to enhancing the motivation for learning.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.213-224
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• 2009

This paper describes a real-time scheduling system re-construction project for automated manufacturing at a 300mm wafer fab of Korean semiconductor manufacturing company. During executing this project, for each main operation such as clean, diffusion, deposition, photolithography, and metallization, each adopted scheduling algorithm was developed, and then those were implemented in a real-time scheduling system. In this paper, we focus on the scheduling algorithms and real-time scheduling system for clean and diffusion operations, that is, a serial-process block with the constraint of limited queue time and batch processors. After this project was completed, the automated manufacturing utilizations of clean and diffusion operations became around 91% and 83% respectively, which were about 50% and 10% at the beginning of this project. The automated manufacturing system reduces direct operating costs, increased throughput on the equipments, and suggests continuous and uninterrupted processings.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.105-108
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• 2011

The increased concern for the security of the oil supply and the negative impact of fossil fuels on the environment, particularly greenhouse gas emissions, has put pressure on society to find renewable fuel alternatives. Compared to the traditional biofuel, ethanol, higher alcohols offer advantage as gasoline substitutes because of their higher energy density and lower hygroscopicity. For this reason, microbial fermentation is known as potential producers for sustainable energy carriers. In this study, bacterial responses including cellular and molecular toxicity were studied in three different microorganisms, such as Escherichia coli, Clostridium acetobutylicum, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In this study, it was analyzed specific stress responses caused by ethanol and buthanol using four different stress responsive genes, i.e. fabA, grpE, katG and recA. The expression levels of these genes were quantified by semi-quantitative reverse transcription-PCR. It was found that four genes have shown different responsive patterns when E. coli cultures were under stressful conditions caused by ethanol and buthanol, respectively. Therefore, in this study, the stress responsive effects caused by these alcohols and the extent of each stress response can be analyzed using the expression levels and patterns of different stress responsive genes.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.23 no.8
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• pp.593-600
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• 2010

In this paper, High brightness LED (light-emitting diodes) driver IC (integrated circuit) using new current sensing circuit is proposed. This LED driver IC can provide a constant current with high current precision over a wide input voltage range. The proposed current-sensing circuit is composed of a cascode current sensor and a current comparator with only one reference voltage. This IC minimizes the voltage stress of the MOSFET (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor) from the maximum input voltage and has low power consumption and chip area by using simple-structured comparator and minimum bias current. To confirm the functioning and characteristics of our proposed LED driver IC, we designed a buck converter. The LED current ripple of the designed IC is in ${\pm}5%$ and a tolerance of the average LED current is lower than 2.43%. This shows much improved feature than the previous method. Also, protections for input voltage and operating temperature are designed to improve the reliability of the designed IC. Designed LED driver IC uses 1.0 ${\mu}m$ X-Fab. BiCMOS process parameters and electrical characteristics and functioning are verified by spectre (Cadence) simulation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.566-569
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• 2001

Hot Plate is the major unit that it used to remove damp of wafer surface, to strength adhesion of photoresist(PR) and to bake coated PR in FAB process of semiconductor. It is necessary to guarantee the performance of Hot Plate(HP). Therefore, in this study designed and developed the reliability system of HP to measure and estimated thermal uniformity and flatness in temperature setting amplitude $0~250^{\circ}C$. We developed the techniques that measures and analyzes thermal uniformity using infrared thermal vision, and compensates measuring error of flatness using laser displacement sensor. For measuring flatness, we specially makes the measurement stage of 3 axes which adopts the precision encoder. The allowable error of measuring technique is less than thermal uniformity, $\pm 0.1^{\circ}C$ and flatness, $\pm 1mm$. It is expected that the developed system can measure from $\Phi$210(wafer 8") to $\Phi$356(wafer 12") and also can be used in performance test of the Cool Plate and industrial heater, etc.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.29-33
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• 2010

Among several critical topics in semiconductor fabrication technology, particles in addition to bonded surface contaminations are issues of great concerns. This study reports the development of a system which inspects wafer bond integrity by analyzing laser beam transmittance deviations and the variations of the intensity caused by the defect thickness. Since the speckling phenomenon exists inherently as long as the laser is used as an optical source and it degrades the inspection accuracy, speckle contrast is another obstacle to be conquered in this system. Consequently speckle contrast reduction methods were reviewed and among the all remedies have been established in the past 30 years the most adaptable solution for inline inspection system is applied. Simulation and subsequently design of experiments has been utilized to discover the best solution to improve irradiance distribution and detection accuracy. Comparison between simulation and experimental results has been done and it confirms an outstanding detection accuracy achievement. Bonded wafer inspection system has been developed and it is ready to be implemented in FAB in the near future.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.257-266
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• 2014

The semiconductor manufacturing industry is managed by a number of parameters from the FAB which is the initial step of production to package test which is the final step of production. Various methods for prediction for the quality and yield are required to reduce the production costs caused by a complicated manufacturing process. In order to increase the accuracy of quality prediction, we have to extract the significant features from the large amount of data. In this study, we propose the method for extracting feature from the cell level data of probe test process using OPTICS which is one of the density-based clustering to improve the prediction accuracy of the quality of the assembled chips that will be placed in a package test. Two features extracted by using OPTICS are used as input variables of quality prediction model because of having position information of the cell defect. The package test progress for chips classified to the correct quality grade by performing the improved prediction method is expected to bring the effect of reducing production costs.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.38-42
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• 2008

316L stainless steel welding tube was electrolytically polished and the inner surface characteristics of the tube were tested. Electro-polishing variables such as current, voltage, concentration of electrolyte and electropolishing time were changed to seek for optimum condition. These makes a optimum conditions for the electro-polishing as 4000 A, 9 V, 1.7 specific gravity of electrolyte, and 30 minute of electro-polishing time. It makes the surface roughness as Ra < $0.25{\mu}m$. XPS test resulted as the ratio of CrO/FeO equals or more to 3/1. AES test resulted as the thickness of CrO film of $38{\AA}$. DTA test resulted as the tube did not react with $N_2,\;H_2\;and\;O_2$ gas below 1073K. As summarize above results, the electro- polished 316L stainless steel welding tube satisfied the conditions to apply as a pipeline for semi- conductor production facility and clean room.