(iTers News) – Global semiconductor chip makes get still trapped into one of the industry’s most vicious cycle of price plunges. To make themselves the least vulnerable to the downward price spirals, they are doing every possible way to drive down chip fabrication costs.

Even if it costs dearly, migrating to a 450mm wafer is one of the cost-cutting ways, as it allows chip makers to fabricate more number of chips out of silicon wafer.

To make the 450mm wafer initiatives reality, semiconductor chip equipment makers are trying to build up a whole ecosystem for 450 mm wafer manufacturing.

Cases in point are KLA-Tencor. The leading provider of process control and yield management solutions unveiled its first process control systems that are capable of handling and inspecting 450mm wafers.

Built on new configured Surfscan® SP3 platform called the Surfscan SP3 450, the fully automated un-patterned wafer inspection systems are designed to meet extreme demand for defect and surface quality characterization requirements of the 20nm node and beyond.

It also enables control of the manufacturing process for 450mm polished silicon and epitaxial silicon substrates.



Hybrid between 300 mm and 450 mm 

The Surfscan SP3 450 delivers critical capability for manufacturers of 450mm process equipment, such as wet clean tools, CMP pads, slurries and polishers, film deposition tools and annealing systems, too.

Hans Lebon, fab manager at imec, a leading nanoelectronics research center in Leuven, Belgium, said, “Wafer manufacturers need to deliver substrates with pristine surfaces to meet chipmakers' tight specifications. Equipment manufacturers need to ensure that they are not adding defects; that cleaning processes are effective; and that film quality is carefully controlled over a larger wafer area.

“The new Surfscan SP3 450 inspection system will help imec characterize the defectivity and surface quality of the wafer, map film thickness and roughness uniformity, and even identify annealing issues. We feel that it's a critical enabling tool for the transition to 450mm, " added he.

"Whether their wafers are 300mm or 450mm in diameter, our customers will need the performance that the Surfscan SP3 can deliver at the 20nm node and beyond," said Ali Salehpour, senior vice president and general manager of the Surfscan / ADE division at KLA-Tencor.

"The SP3 remains the only unpatterned inspection platform in the industry to use sensitivity-enabling deep ultra-violet (DUV) illumination, and it is the only tool of its kind with the ability to generate high-resolution maps of surface quality, “

Another advantage of the 450mm version of the Surfscan SP3 is that the performance and reliability of its optics and algorithms have already been proven on the more than fifty 300mm SP3's installed at advanced development and production sites around the world.

The Surfscan SP3 is also available in a 300mm-only version and a 300mm/450mm bridge configuration. SP3 models are designed to match among themselves and correlate to previous-generation Surfscan SP2 and SP2XP systems, preserving the factory's baseline and offering flexibility for routing work in progress.

 

 

 

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