Chamber Mismatching Calibration with Adjusted Run-to-Run Regulation in Semiconductor Manufacturing

Achieving the delivery requirements with respect to the volumes and quality at the same time in semiconductor fabrication requires critically controlling the process variability. One obvious issue resulted from the process variability is the machine/chamber mismatching. In the high-mix/low-volume production line, it is getting more and more challenging to match the chamber performance due to the complex manufacturing environment with complex re-entrant flows, diverse products of very different technologies, and unpredictable machine availability. An adjusted Run-to-Run (R2R) regulation is proposed in this research to analyze the mismatching issue by considering together the sensor data and the wafer metrology. After identifying the significant variables linked to the mismatching, a Virtual Metrology (VM) modeling step is performed and will be integrated into a multi-criteria optimization program to compute the corresponding recipe adjustments, i.e., the R2R settings. As a result, the sensor behavior and metrology measurements among parallel machines/chambers can be matched as close as possible.