tag: inspection

Enabling Production-Ready AI For Semiconductor Manufacturing
By Tareq Aljaber - 21 May, 2026 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor inspection has always been a scalability problem. Inspection teams are buried in manual reviews because the machines on the line throw false rejects, miss real defects, and can't learn from the data they're already producing. The job hasn't really changed in decades. Find defects faster. Find them with higher sensitivity. Keep cost down. And whatever you do, don't bury the review ... » read more

The Specialty Device Surge Part 3: Solving The Process Control Challenges Of MEMS, Photonics, Co-Packaged Optics, And More
By Christopher Haire - 12 May, 2026 - Comments: 0

Every day, consumers rely on an invisible network of specialty semiconductor devices without realizing it. The smartphone in your pocket is a good place to start. It knows when you rotate the screen thanks to MEMS sensors, and its camera delivers crisp images through advanced CMOS image sensors. Meanwhile, fast charging technology, wireless connectivity, facial recognition, and high-frequency c... » read more

Research Bits: May 11
By Jesse Allen - 11 May, 2026 - Comments: 0

Non-destructive terahertz inspection Researchers from Adelaide University, Virginia Diodes, the Hasso Plattner Institute, and the University of Potsdam used terahertz waves to observe electrical activity inside fully packaged semiconductor devices as they are operating. The technique relies on an ultra-sensitive detection system using a specialized homodyne quadrature receiver, which can pi... » read more

The Smart Advantage: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Inspection And Metrology In Semiconductor Manufacturing
By Charlie Zhu - 14 Apr, 2026 - Comments: 0

There is no doubt that the semiconductor industry is in an era of rapid and profound transformation, driven by an increasing demand for smaller, faster, and more powerful chips. As the speed of innovation continues to advance, so does the pressure on semiconductor manufacturers to detect and address defects and inconsistencies with near-perfect accuracy to keep pace with this demand. Manual ... » read more

What’s Failing At The Interface
By Gregory Haley - 07 Apr, 2026 - Comments: 0

Key Takeaways The interface is where failures in advanced packaging become visible, but it's increasingly not where they originate. Weak interfaces often don't fail at time zero, but they do degrade due to parametric drift and margin erosion that binary test screens miss entirely. The temporary test interconnect is the largest variable in the measurement chain and must be controlled ... » read more

The Specialty Device Surge, Part 1: Wafer Size Transitions Are Powering The Future Of Specialty Devices And Bringing New Challenges
By Christopher Haire - 10 Mar, 2026 - Comments: 0

Specialty devices are the unsung heroes of modern life. For many in the semiconductor industry today, the spotlight is on the SiC and GaN power devices used in automotive, green energy, fast-charge consumer electronics (CE), and high-performance computing (HPC) applications (Figures 1 and 2). However, specialty devices are more than just power devices. They are a broad class of semiconductor... » read more

Research Bits: Mar. 3
By Jesse Allen - 03 Mar, 2026 - Comments: 0

Computational electron microscopy Researchers from Cornell University, TSMC, and ASM used electron ptychography for atomic-scale defect inspection of transistors. The computational imaging method uses an extremely precise electron microscope pixel array detector (EMPAD) to collect detailed scattering patterns of electrons after they pass through transistors and compare how the patterns chan... » read more

Beyond Optical: A New E-Beam Inspection For Advanced Chips
By Christophe Begue - 10 Feb, 2026 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor industry is defined by its relentless pursuit of smaller, faster, and more powerful chips. As we push into advanced 3D architectures like gate-all-around (GAA) transistors, a critical challenge emerges: finding the defects that kill yield. Many of these flaws are deeply buried within complex structures and impossible to see with traditional optical inspection. This creates ... » read more

A Clear Advantage: Precision Glass Carrier Inspection For AI And HPC Markets
By Jason Lin - 13 Jan, 2026 - Comments: 0

If you’ve been following the evolution of advanced packaging, you know that the industry is pushing boundaries like never before. From high-performance computing to industry-upending AI devices, the demand for smaller, faster, and more powerful chips is driving innovation at every level. One of the unsung heroes in this transformation: Glass carriers. These carriers are becoming essential ... » read more

Semiconductor Manufacturing In The AI Era
By Christophe Begue - 13 Jan, 2026 - Comments: 0

At the 2025 PDF Solutions Users Conference, CEO John Kibarian delivered a wide-ranging keynote that positioned the semiconductor industry at a pivotal inflection point, one driven by explosive AI demand but constrained by unprecedented manufacturing complexity. His central message: the path to a trillion-dollar semiconductor industry by 2030 requires fundamentally rethinking how manufacturers c... » read more

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