Method and system for event detection in plasma processes
First Claim
1. A plasma processing system, comprising:
- a plasma processing chamber capable of processing a substrate with a plasma;
a spectrometer for monitoring an optical emission of the plasma and producing a optical emission data;
an algorithm for reducing the quantity of optical emission data; and
a neural network for detecting a plasma processing event by analyzing the reduced optical emission data.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Plasma events are detected by analyzing the spectral emissions of a plasma process of a substrate. A plasma is monitored by a spectrometer which produces plasma emission data which includes an intensity value for each individual wavelength which is a large quantity of information. The plasma emission data is processed with an algorithm or combination of algorithms to reduce the quantity of the plasma emission data. A peak finding algorithm which identifies the wavelengths of light which are associated with a plasma process allowing the other wavelengths to be ignored. A data reduction algorithm provides a single value representative of the intensity of the emitted light from each peak. A noise reduction algorithm removes noise from the spectral signal by eliminating signals at wavelengths which do not exceed a threshold intensity and do not exceed a threshold wavelength span. The data may also be processed with principal component analysis to further reduce the optical emission data. By reducing the optical emission data, the neural network can provide faster data analysis. The neural network of the inventive system identifies the plasma event after being trained and can control the processing equipment when plasma events are detected.
21 Citations
20 Claims
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1. A plasma processing system, comprising:
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a plasma processing chamber capable of processing a substrate with a plasma;
a spectrometer for monitoring an optical emission of the plasma and producing a optical emission data;
an algorithm for reducing the quantity of optical emission data; and
a neural network for detecting a plasma processing event by analyzing the reduced optical emission data. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
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9. A method of plasma processing a substrate, comprising the steps of:
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exposing the substrate to a plasma in a plasma processing chamber;
monitoring the plasma with a spectrometer which produces plasma emission data;
processing the plasma emission data with an algorithm to obtain a reduced quantity of plasma emission data;
analyzing the reduced quantity of plasma emission data with a neural network to identifying a plasma processing event. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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16. A method for analyzing plasma emissions, comprising the steps of:
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providing a plasma processing chamber containing a substrate;
exposing the substrate to a plasma;
monitoring the optical emission of the plasma with a spectrometer which produces plasma emission data;
processing the plasma emission data with an algorithm to obtain a reduced quantity of plasma emission data;
training a neural network to process the reduced quantity of plasma emission data; and
identifying a plasma processing event with the trained neural network from the reduced quantity of plasma emission data. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification