Improve the process to enhance the effectiveness of the cleaning with the chemistry
Improve the rinsing process to ensure the defects removal
Try to eliminate the wasting. Do we really need this?
To increase the density of the chemistry by temperature reduction
Prevent evaporation of the chemistry from the wafer
Increase the pressure in the chamber
Principle #7 – Nesting dolls – place one object inside another.
The idea that is generated from this principle is as follows.
Why do we use only one single nozzle? Why not shower? The shower has several halls – a lot of nozzles. More than that, we can make halls with different diameters in the center and in the periphery of the shower to ensure equal coverage of the disc with the chemistry.
So, the idea is to replace the single nozzle with the shower
Principle #15 – Dynamism – change an object from rigid to movable or adaptive
The idea that is generated is as follows:
Replace the constant flow of the chemistry with variable flow, especially in the and of the process, to ensure defects removal from the disc.
So, the idea is to change (even make pulses) flow while the cleaning process.
Principle #13 – The other way around – Turn the object “upside-down”
This is a great tip. Indeed, why the disk is kept “face-up” during the washing process?
It would be much better to keep the disc “face down” to improve the removal of the defects from the surface.
So, the idea is to keep the wafer “face down” during the washing process
Principle #16 – Partial or accessive action – do slightly more or slightly less
If 100 percent of an object is hard to achieve using a given solution method then, by using 'slightly less' or 'slightly more' of the same method, the problem may be considerably easier to solve.
A wafer is not contaminated equally: there are some areas with more defects and some areas with fewer amount of defects
The idea is to use the shower with a graduated flow - the more the defects the higher the flow
The general conclusion is to eliminate the system of the air supply and exhaust. Let air enter the chamber and convert exhaust to drain with very little under-pressure. The will stabilize the performance, reduce the cost and make the system more simple.
The wafer is contaminated not equally. Use special cleaning on the areas that are more contaminated
The process is related to microelectronics - microchip manufacturing. The purpose of the process is to create a SiO2 layer on the surface of a Si wafer. Equipment: Vertical furnace to heat the wafers in the Q2 atmosphere and perform oxidation on the wafer surface. Process: The oxidation occurs on the front side and on the back side of the wafer Requirements: Create a SiO2 thin layer with a certain thickness and low sigma - low standard deviation of the thickness between the wafers and within the wafer Failure: Wafers from the lower zone have higher thickness and significantly higher within wafer sigma (standard deviation of the thickness within the wafer)
The project was dedicated to production yield improvement in microchip manufacturing. The bumps are created on the top of a wafer and used for the final test of all dies. Only good dies are taken for the packaging. All dies that fail the test will be scrapped. The process yield depends on the amount of "good" and "bad" dies. It was revealed that in some cases, the time between the end of the process and the final test impacts the yield. The longer the dwelling, the more dies fail the final test. If the dwelling exceeds hundreds of hours, the amount of failed dies becomes dramatically high, which results in the scrapping of the whole wafer. The problem was analyzed and solved.
The number of particles is a critical parameter for microchip manufacturing. Each, even a very small particle, can potentially destroy a die. Therefore filters are widely used. Water is always filtered through fine filters to reduce the number of particles. Nevertheless, if the filter is too fine, it could cause a problem. This issue was investigated with the help of Functional Modeling. Possible solutions were generated using 40 Inventive Principles.