Sensor Technology Drivers in Semiconductor Manufacturing

As in abounding industries, the amount of automation in semiconductor accomplishment is increasing. The affidavit for this are the aforementioned as in any industry appetite to automate: access throughput, abate labor, and advance quality.

However, semiconductor accomplishment presents some different abstruse challenges that differentiate it from accepted accomplishment in added industries. Some of the factors active sensor technology in automatic semiconductor accomplishment include:

Small size. The apple-pie allowance environment, all-important for semiconductor processing, is actual big-ticket per aboveboard foot. There is connected burden to abate the admeasurement of the machines, and the air flow sensors
that go into them.

In fact, the top amount of apple-pie allowance amplitude is addition motivator for abbreviation the role of bodies in the process. Not alone do bodies yield up a lot of concrete space, they represent about 75% of the atom contaminant sources in the apple-pie room.

Advanced Action Control (APC). APC is a adjustment for abridgement the time anatomy amid accumulating of SPC (Statistical Action Control) abstracts and the appliance of action corrections. This agency that rather than time-consuming alien metrology, there is a drive for alleged “in-situ” metrology. There is a charge tofiber optic sensors
admeasurement action variables in real-time or near-real time in adjustment to abutting the APC bend in a beneath time frame.

Extreme ecology conditions. Semiconductor accomplishment can generally absorb appropriate ambient conditions, for example:

Liquid or aerial chemistries that can advance assorted accepted sensor apartment materials

Vacuum chambers, area outgassing from the sensor have to be controlled and the sensor have to not berserk aggrandize due to gasses trapped central it

High temperatures

High pressures, e.g. sensors operating central valves

In abounding cases, sensor applications in semiconductor accomplishment absorb a actual specific set of mechanical, environmental, and analysis achievement requirements that ultimately crave a custom sensor solution. Since the assemblage aggregate for such custom sensors is low, the amount per barometer sensor
can end up appropriately high. Higher sensor costs tend to abate the amount allowances of amplitude abridgement and added automation, so it comes down to a action of optimization. Ultimately, the ambition is to accomplish a absolute acknowledgment on investment by ensuring that the amount accumulation consistent from automation calmly beat the amount of automating.