Automation and Integration in Semiconductor Manufacturing

Semiconductor manufacturing spans across many manufacturing areas, including wafer manufacturing where electronic circuitry is built layered on a wafer, chip manufacturing that involves circuit probing and testing, and product manufacturing from which the final IC (integrated circuits) products are assembled, and finally tested. Semiconductor manufacturing is well known as the most challenging and complicated production systems that involve huge capital investment and advanced technologies. Fabrication of semiconductor products demands sophisticated control on quality, variability, yield, and reliability. It is crucial to automate all the semiconductor manufacturing processes to ensure the correctness and effectiveness of process sequences and the corresponding parameter settings, and to integrate all the fab (semiconductor factory) activities to provide the efficiency, reliability, and availability of semiconductor manufacturing. Automation and integration are the keys to success in modern semiconductor manufacturing. This chapter deals with the automation and integration problems in semiconductor manufacturing. Automation plays an increasingly important role in daily operations of semiconductor manufacturing. Like in the other industry, automation in semiconductor manufacturing originated from replacing human operators in tasks that are routine but tedious, or that should be done in dangerous, hazard environments. The ultimate goal of automation in semiconductor manufacturing is to eliminate the need of humans in fab operations. Depending on different degrees of operator attention and automatic control, fab operations are usually classified into three modes: Manual, Semi-Automated, and Fully Automated. Traditional manual mode of operations where fab tools (semiconductor equipment) are operated without computer assistance is very scarce to find in existing commercial fabs. Semi-automated operations are still quite popular in 6and 8-in fabs where processing tools are automated and controlled by computers, but fab operators are responsible for the movement of materials from and to the tools. Fully automated mode is now well established in 12-in (300-mm) fab operations where there are complete computer-controlled processing and handling. Automation in semiconductor fabs has saved billions of dollars by eliminating and reducing misprocessed products, and improved operational efficiency by reducing human times and costs spent in data entry and product movement. 3