Guest Editorial Special Section on the 2012 SEMI ... - IEEE Xplore

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING, VOL. 26, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2013

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Guest Editorial Special Section on the 2012 SEMI Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference The semiconductor industry is arguably the fastest evolving industry today or perhaps ever. Semiconductor technology doubles in performance (in terms of transistor count) every two years, allowing for a rapid sequence of new product offerings that often dazzles the marketplace. Compare this to the auto industry where fuel efficiency, its major measure of performance, has improved at a rate of only 4% annually.1 Other notable automotive technology improvements in recent years are items like rearview cameras, on board navigators, and additional air bags, ironically all enabled by the electronics industry. The most significant improvements to lifestyle in the world in the last 25 years are predominantly due to the electronics industry. High-definition flat panel TVs, gaming systems, smartphones, and other personal devices, personal computers, better weather prediction made possible by supercomputers, and on-line banking, stock trading and other forms of web-based business are items that come immediately to our mind. Certainly the computer science field has also contributed a great deal as most hardware requires just as good software. With this rapid change, comes the persistent challenge for suppliers of these products to field a fresh, relevant, compelling, competitively priced product line to stay at or near the top of the market. A company can dominate the market, only to find itself out of favor two years later. The cell phone market, where the top vendors are completely different from those five years ago, is an excellent example of this.2 The requirements of these product manufacturers trickle down to their semiconductor suppliers. Semiconductor device performance in terms of transistor density, speed, heat dissipation, and cost must rapidly improve. Innovation is a priority. Fortunately, avenues exist for collaboration across the semiconductor industry, improving the rate of this progress and thereby the caliber of electronic products that can be offered to the public. This, in turn, keeps upward pressure on the semiconductor industry’s revenue. One avenue for collaboration is through organizations such as International SEMATECH and the Global 450 mm Consortium, which partners five of the biggest players in the semiconductor industry despite their traditional rivalries. A second avenue for semiconductor industry collaboration is the sharing of ideas through the literature, such as this journal, and at conferences. The SEMI Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference (ASMC) is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year in serving this purpose. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSM.2013.2285071 1 University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, http://www. umich.edu/∼umtriswt/EDI− sales-weighted-mpg.html. 2 J. D. Stoll, “A New Window to Nokia’s CEO,” The Wall Street Journal, Sep. 4, 2013, pp. B1, B4.

ASMC is a leading conference for sharing ideas for improving semiconductor manufacturing and brings together semiconductor manufacturers, equipment suppliers, and academia as conference paper authors, presenters, panelists, and attendees. ASMC is sponsored and organized by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), with technical sponsorship from the IEEE Electron Devices Society and the IEEE Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology Society (CPMT). ASMC strives to provide the most relevant and timely information it can to attendees. Recognized leaders in the industry are invited as keynote speakers to share their viewpoint and knowledge on topics considered to be of particular interest to attendees. The 2012 Conference, which returned for a second time to Saratoga Springs, NY, USA, featured a keynote on the “Semiconductor Customer Perspective” by Michael Campbell, Senior VP of Engineering at Qualcomm, Inc. The semiconductor product source selection process of larger electronics firms such as Qualcomm, Inc., has enormous influence on the industry. A second keynote was delivered by IBM Fellow, Subramanian Iyer, on the evolution of embedded memory at IBM, and a third, a forecast for the IC market, was presented by Risto Puhakka, President of VLSI Research. In addition, the conference included a panel discussion on where the industry should invest future research and development dollars featuring industry notables representing both the supplier and manufacturer viewpoints. E. J. Nowak, Distinguished Engineer from IBM Research, gave a tutorial on FINFET design. The core of ASMC is made up by the many papers that are presented in two parallel session tracks. These papers are peerreviewed and cover a broad range of topics, representative of the many challenges facing the semiconductor manufacturing industry, including advanced metrology, advanced processes and materials, advanced process control, contamination-free manufacturing, cost reduction, equipment reliability and productivity, defect inspection, environmental, health and safety, factory automation and dynamics, human resources management and development, lithography advances and challenges, yield enhancement, and yield modeling. This special ASMC 2012 section of the IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing is a compilation of enhanced versions of some of the best papers from the conference. These papers were selected based both on the quality of the work they describe, and because they represent the range of topics covered at ASMC. The first paper, by S. Lichtensteiger et al., describes how chip yield can be maximized by binning by voltage. The

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING, VOL. 26, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2013

second paper by C. Bunke et al. is a case study discussing a wafer arcing issue that caused wafer edge defectivity for a technology in manufacturing. This defectivity was resolved by changing the topography at the wafer edge through wafer etch recipe optimization. In the third paper, A. Kalir et al. discuss an Intel effort to improve tool utilization by identifying and reducing process and tool-related delays that were hidden under busy or running states in the general fab-wide automation system. The fourth paper, by M. Cholette et al., presents a method for the monitoring of complex systems in the presence of multiple operating regimes that facilitates concurrent maintenance and operational decision-making in a production manufacturing system in order to optimize uptime and minimize losses due to deficient quality and downtime. The fifth paper, by C. Weber et al., is a qualitative empirical study of 29 semiconductor manufacturer and supplier firms that investigates the challenges associated with implementing lean practices that require broadly based collaboration across firms. The study finds that the biggest challenge to industry-wide collaboration is managing knowledge flows between users and suppliers in a manner that allows all parties to collaborate without losing competitive advantage. The sixth paper highlights the utilization of e-beam inspection, an area of increasing importance for semiconductor manufacturing. The paper, by O. Patterson et al., describes the use of e-beam inspection for detection of physical defects in the context of four case studies. The seventh paper, by C. Boye et al., leverages the study of nonvisual defect data to act as a quality indicator in the lithography sector. The eighth paper by AMAT’s S. Singlevich et al. details a system in a plasma chamber to detect arcing events in real time, thereby reducing the likelihood of wafer scrap and yield loss.

In the ninth paper by W. Tseng, he and the authors describe post-Cu CMP cleans that contain acidic and basic solutions targeted to reduce CMP-induced defectivity. Surface analysis is provided to help explain the mechanisms at work. Lastly, the tenth paper by W. Nicoll discusses various fluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbon gas chemistries to etch TSVs with regard to etch rate, selectivity, undercut, sidewall roughness. Sidewall passivation is discussed as a big factor in these outputs and the greenness of the gases is weighed. Jennifer Braggin and Larry Pulvirent, collaborators in assembling this collection of papers, served as conference chairpersons, and deserve special recognition, along with Margaret Kindling, SEMI conference coordinator from SEMI, for leading the effort to put together another outstanding conference. Special thanks goes to the authors of the papers appearing in this special section for their efforts in improving already outstanding papers with new material. Thank you also to the reviewers for their time and expertise in evaluating these works. We sincerely express our gratitude to Sean Cunningham, the Editor, for the opportunity to highlight ASMC 2012 in this special section and his continuing support of ASMC. OLIVER D. PATTERSON, Guest Editor, IBM 300-mm Fab East Fishkill, NY USA PAUL WERBANETH, Guest Editor JENNIFER BRAGGIN, Guest Editor Tufts University Medford, MA 02155 USA LAWRENCE PULVIRENT, Guest Editor GLOBALFOUNDRIES Fab 8 Facility Malta, NY USA

Oliver D. Patterson (S’93–M’98–SM’07) received the S.B. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA, the M.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, all in electrical engineering. He is currently a Senior Engineer with IBM’s 300-mm Fab, East Fishkill, NY, USA, where he develops and applies tools and methodologies for yield improvement of cutting edge technologies. His primary focus is on the use of e-beam inspection for detection of voltage contrast, and physical and pattern fidelity defects. Previously, he was with Bell Labs, as part of Lucent Technologies and Agere Systems, focusing on semiconductor development. Dr. Patterson is a member of the Steering Committee of the ASMC and is Conference Co-Chairman for ASMC 2014. He has served as a Guest Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing for a number of years.

Paul Werbaneth received the B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA. He has recently completed studies in spoken Japanese in the Cornell Summer FALCON Program. He has been a Business Development Manager with the EV Group, the Vice President of marketing and applications with Tegal Corporation, the Country Manager with Tegal Japan, Inc., a Senior Plasma Etch Process Engineer with Hitachi High Technologies, and a Hands-On Process Sustaining Engineer with an Intel wafer fab. Mr. Werbaneth is a member of the SEMI ASMC Steering Committee. His writing activities include his frequent contributions to the topic of 2.5-D/3-D integrated circuit technology and commercialization to the website 3-D InCites, his work as a Guest Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing, the contributed chapter on TSV etching in the book 3D Integration for VLSI Systems, and an extensive number of articles, papers, and blogs regarding the semiconductor capital equipment business.

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Jennifer Braggin received the B.S. degree in materials science and engineering from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA, and the M.S. degree in engineering science from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA. She is currently pursuing the M.S. degree in engineering management at Tufts University, Medford/Somerville, MA, USA. She has spent her career involved in various roles within the semiconductor industry. With IBM Microelectronics, she was engaged in both the process limited yield and physical failure analysis areas, and focused on driving to root cause of yield degrading physical defects. After leaving IBM Microelectronics, she joined Entegris, Inc., Billerica, MA, USA. She has held various roles in applications engineering and engineering management and was also Entegris, Inc.’s First Industrial Assignee to IMEC, Leuven, Belgium. She is currently a Senior Technical Marketing Manager. Ms. Braggin has been a member of the ASMC Technical Committee and Steering Committee since 2009, and served as 2012 Conference Co-Chairperson.

Lawrence Pulvirent received the B.S. and M.Eng. degrees in electrical engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA. He is currently the New Product Introduction (NPI) Manager with the GLOBALFOUNDRIES Fab 8 Facility, Malta, NY, USA, handling the product setup and tapeout readiness functions for the factory. Prior to this, he was with Freescale Semiconductor, Motorola, Raytheon, Commodore Semiconductor, and RCA, involved in various technical roles in product engineering, yield improvement, process integration, and NPI. From 1999 to 2011, he managed Device/Yield Engineering Teams at Motorola and Freescale Semiconductor across many technologies driving successful NPI and yield improvement activities. Mr. Pulvirent is a member of the SEMI ASMC Steering Committee and has been involved with the conference almost since its inception, co-chairing the 2012 ASMC Conference.