Defects And Contamination Control


This week’s episode of the new Cosmos was particularly interesting because Neil Degrasse Tyson filled in a part of the recent history of semiconductors and made a great point about ethics in science. I had just moved to the United States when Carl Sagan’s Cosmos first aired, and at the time I thought he connected all sorts of interesting dots. The new edition is even better. In this ... » read more

Non-Visual Defect Inspection: The Tech of Tomorrow?


Remember when it first became obvious that the semiconductor manufacturing industry was going to expect lithography to resolve features smaller than the wavelength of light used in the litho tools themselves? Thanks to techniques such as the use of phase shift photomasks, sub-wavelength lithography is standard in chip fabs today. It might even be viewed as “old hat,” although still an ex... » read more

Inside Leti’s Litho Lab


By Mark LaPedus Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down to discuss future lithography challenges with Serge Tedesco, lithography program manager at CEA-Leti; Laurent Pain, lithography lab manager at CEA-Leti; and Raluca Tiron, a senior scientist at CEA-Leti. SMD: CEA-Leti has two major and separate programs, including one in directed self-assembly (DSA) and another in multi-beam ... » read more

Non-visual defect inspection gives fabs better eyes, new insights


For a long time, semiconductor defect inspection focused on particles, and particle defects remain an important cause of yield loss. But as devices have become more complex, additional kinds of defects have drawn the attention of process engineers. Bridging, pattern collapse, and other resist defects have become particularly important in the sub-100 nm era. The introduction of CMP brought abras... » read more

For want of an o-ring, the mask was lost


O-ring seals are everywhere in a typical semiconductor fab. Any piece of vacuum equipment uses several of them to seal the openings where components of the process chamber fit together. Yet, as ubiquitous as they are, most process engineers don’t think about them very much. They buy the seal specified by the equipment vendor, from the supplier with the most attractive price, and pretty much l... » read more

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