Wafer Inspection Equipment; Important For the Management of the Semiconductor Wafer Manufacturing Process

 

Wafer inspection equipment are utilized for the detection of defects during the manufacturing of semiconductor wafer. These equipment detect both the pattern defects and the physical defects by obtaining the coordinates of the defect’s position. The major role of an inspection system is to detect defects on a wafer and find out their position coordinates. Wafer inspection equipment help improve the quality of the semiconductor. Therefore, these inspection devices are indispensable for maintaining the production yield of semiconductors.

Wafer inspection equipment is an effective, convenient, and economical way for manufacturers to test and verify the quality of semiconductor wafers before shipping them to end-users. Some equipment can handle both micro and macro-inspection of wafers. This innovative, compact, and cost-effective equipment are ideal for handling majority of wafer inspection jobs. Thus, inspection is important in wafer fabrication. It is a process for detecting any particles or defects in a wafer. Inspection can be performed on a patterned process wafer or on a bare wafer.

Semiconductor wafer manufacturing inspection involves the use of wafer inspection equipment to check for compliance or non-compliance, as well as unsuitability or abnormality, in terms of specific criteria. In electronics, the wafer serves as the substrate for microelectronic devices built in and upon the wafer. Wafer fabrication is used to build components with the necessary electrical structures. Thus, there is an increasing demand for wafers in the electronics industry, which in turn increases the demand for wafer inspection equipment.

For example, in 2018, the US-based KLA-Tencor announced the launch of two new defect-inspection products, such as Surfscan SP7 and Voyager 1015, to address key challenges in tool and process monitoring during silicon wafer and chip manufacturing at the leading-edge logic and memory nodes. In short, wafer inspection equipment are essential for the management of the semiconductor wafer manufacturing process.