INDUSTRY NEWS

ASMC 2001

Tool use, yield control, factory dynamics share stage at European debut of annual conference

Presentations at this year's advanced semiconductor manufacturing conference in Munich reflect concerns sparked by the industry's accelerating shift toward 300-mm processes, says the technical chairman of the event. In particular, asserts Mart Graef, getting the most out of fab tools has taken on an added importance that authors and poster presenters recognize.

With the industry "on the brink of transferring to 300-mm wafer fabs, tool utilization is becoming more important than ever," notes Graef, the strategic program manager for process modules in the chief technology office of Philips Semiconductors. "As a consequence, many of the contributions at the conference deal with factory dynamics and yield control. There is a tendency for process technologies to become more and more generic, whereas products are diversifying."

Graef cites system-on-a-chip devices as an example of this diversification and points out that some experts see process technology "becoming a 'commodity.' Consequently, the challenge faced by many modern fabs is how to remain cost-effective in a rapidly changing industrial environment. A special problem is posed by rapidly increasing mask costs. Advanced lithography requires the use of extremely complex, or enhanced, masks. This has unprecedented consequences for the need to design for cost-effective manufacturing."

Held for the first time in Europe, the 12th Annual IEEE/SEMI Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference (ASMC) will take up these issues in the first session on the opening day of the event. Slated for April 23­24, ASMC will be held at Munich's International Congress Centre. Among the papers in the session on factory dynamics are presentations on balancing mask and photolithography costs as well as determining the capacity components of the different classes of multichamber tools.

In addition to factory dynamics, the seven sessions cover process control, advanced process technology, a two-part examination of yield modeling and analysis, and defect reduction. Fourteen poster presentations in Session 4 cover topics such as pump handling of CMP slurries, evaluating the cleanliness of UHP gas filters, a cross-contamination study between CMOS image sensor and IC, and a hard-mask STI process for 0.13-µm geometries.

The Session 5 meeting on yield modeling features an invited paper from IBM called "Swampfinder." The authors are Daniel Maynard, Bette Bergman Reuter, and Raymond Rosner of IBM. Graef says the intriguing title refers to a tool IBM developed "to identify the 'muck in the design.' The idea is to control design-process sensitivities that are potential yield killers. This procedure avoids the need for extensive design revisions that are no longer compatible with the increasingly severe time-to-market requirements."

Other invited papers cover topics such as efficient control of killer particles with SEM-ADC and statistical bin analysis on a wafer probe.

The 2000 ASMC DuPont Photomasks Best Paper Award will be presented to Charles Weber and Eric von Hippel of the MIT Sloan School of Management. Their paper is titled "Maximizing Profitability Through Easy Information Transfer."

After 11 consecutive years in the United States, the ASMC is making its European debut after organizers decided last year to alternate locations. Although fewer sessions are scheduled than last year's event, Graef believes the ASMC's reputation "as a leading conference on semiconductor manufacturing technologies" remains intact. "I am confident that we can maintain the high standard that was set by previous editions."

The technical chairman says the acceptance rate for abstracts "is comparable to last year's conference. This could be an indication of quality." Paper recruitment was hampered somewhat because the deadline for submission was moved up to accommodate scheduling ASMC to run concurrently with Semicon Europa in April. The lack of time led organizers to schedule some of the accepted contributions as poster presentations, but, Graef adds, "this also reflects the fact that the [ASMC] committee was quite happy with the level of the contributions. The focus is somewhat more on factory and manufacturing issues rather than—but not excluding—process technology." Furthermore, Graef says organizers did not wish ASMC to overlap with Semicon Europa's technical conference, which runs in parallel with ASMC. Less time was allocated for R&D work on process technology as a result, he points out.

Margaret Kindling, manager of SEMI's industry programs, says the spring date was selected in order to avoid a conflict with the autumn International Symposium on Semiconductor Manufacturing (ISSM) conference held, this year, in San Jose. "We saw that we would be able to provide an opportunity for industry professionals to attend a manufacturing conference every six months, given the speed of innovation in our industry." The decision to offer a European version "was based on a discussion with our members and with our office in Europe as well as with the ASMC committee to reach a broader audience."

Kindling expects between 200 and 250 persons to attend the ASMC. By holding it in conjunction with Semicon Europa, "we will potentially be able to attract people who ordinarily go to that show," she points out.

Graef notes that the conference goal remains the same. "The objective is to present an overview of the state-of-the art in semiconductor manufacturing. The setting should inspire participants from both the equipment/materials and IC manufacturing communities to discuss ideas on possible improvements of the manufacturing process."

Further information on ASMC 2001 is available at http://www.semi.org.

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