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: Si (wafer) + O2 (gas within the furnace) --> SiO2 (thin film layer on the wafer surface.
The process is performed in batches of up to 150 wafers in one run.
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)
Important note: In order to achieve better thermal uniformity, the furnace is built of three heaters that are managed differently according to data from a certain thermocouple (TC).
The project aims to analyze the system and process using Process Functional Modeling (PFM), create a model of the process, create a model of the failure, and generate a solution.
Flash heating of a wafer is widely used in microchip manufacturing. The purpose of the process is to prevent the diffusion of ions and atoms. During the flash process, a wafer breakage occurs. The project's purpose is to learn and understand the mechanism of the wafer breakage and propose the solutions to prevent the wafer breakage
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.
Wet cleaning is widely used in microchip manufacturing. Single wafer equipment is working as follows. A wafer rotates, and chemistry is poured from a movable nozzle. Water rinsing is performed at the end of the process. Loading of a new batch of the chemistry resulted in excursion - a strongly increased amount of defects was observed on the wafer after the processing. The project is dedicated to the failure analysis and creation of innovative solutions.