METHOD AND SYSTEM OF MONITORING MANUFACTURING EQUIPMENT

• US 20090192632A1
• Filed: 01/30/2008
• Published: 07/30/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 01/30/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: GlobalFoundries, Inc.
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Yamartino, John M.
• Granted Patent: US 8,010,225 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 700/12
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/024 Quantitative history assessment, e.g. mathematical relationships between available data; Functions therefor; Principal component analysis [PCA]; Partial least square [PLS]; Statistical classifiers, e.g. Bayesian networks, linear regression or correlation analysis; Neural networks
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0281 Quantitative, e.g. mathematical distance; Clustering; Neural networks; Statistical analysis

Abstract

A method and system is provided for monitoring manufacturing equipment and, more particularly, for monitoring manufacturing equipment in a semiconductor fabrication facility using existing tool elements. The method includes operating a tool working at an operating mode such that at least one of its control parameters is outside of a normal operating range, and measuring the at least on of the control parameters of the tool working at the operating mode outside of the normal operating range. The method further includes detecting a change to a condition of the tool based on the measuring of the at least one control parameter.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

operating a tool working at an operating mode such that at least one of its control parameters is outside of a normal operating range;

measuring the at least on of the control parameters of the tool working at the operating mode outside of the normal operating range; and

detecting a change to a condition of the tool based on the measuring of the at least one control parameter.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the operating mode puts a pressure control valve of a vacuum processing chamber about above 35% open.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the operating mode puts the pressure control valve of a vacuum processing chamber above 40% open.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the measuring of the parameter is used for statistical process control (SPC), Fault Detection and Classification (FDC), monitoring or analyses of the tool.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising ramping a flow or pressure to move a pressure control valve from a normal control region to substantially open or fully open position.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the operating mode is embedded within at least one processing step or conditioning step of a fabrication process.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the operating mode is a dedicated step executed before or after a conditioning step or a wafer processing step.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the operating mode is executed during an idle time of the tool.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising ramping a flow or pressure to obtain a cold-chamber baseline measurement of at least one of wall outgassing and conductance change.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the ramping is continuous during the idle time.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising comparing the parameter across multiple tools for determining differences between the tools.

12. A method comprising measuring at least one parameter of a chamber of a tool set when in an insensitive operating region and comparing the at least one parameter to determine a condition of the chamber.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the insensitive operating region is about above 35% of a pressure control valve opening.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein the insensitive operating region is a sensitive region for determining at least gas temperature and gas dissociation level.

15. The method of claim 12, wherein the tool set is at least two tools and the measuring of the parameters is in two chambers in an insensitive operating region, and the comparing is comparing the parameters of the at least two tools to determine chamber conditions.

16. The method of claim 12, wherein the parameters are measurements:

taken during an idle time of the tool set;

embedded during at least one processing step of a fabrication process;

or

taken before or after a conditioning step or a wafer processing step.

17. A system monitoring conditions in chambers of tools implemented on a computer program product comprising a computer readable media, the computer program product being operable to:

measure at least one control parameter of a tool working at an operating mode outside of its normal operating range; and

detect a change to a condition of the tool based on the measuring of the at least one control parameter.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the computer program product being operable to provide, based on the detecting a change, statistical process control (SPC), Fault Detection and Classification (FDC), monitoring or analyses of the tool.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the computer program product is operable to detect changes to at least one of:

gas temperature, gas dissociation level, chamber wall condition and deposition;

outgassing;

pressure gage calibration;

chamber conductance; and

mass flow control (MFC) calibration.