semiconductor manufacturing

From measurement equipment and components to medical devices, SEMI will showcase SMART technologies at its Smart Starts Here Pavilion, booth 40761, in the Smart Home section at CES, the world’s largest consumer electronics event. Do you want to discuss new technology directions and the latest developments in sensors, displays and electronics manufacturing? Hear about the new SEMI program that promotes “cool” careers in semiconductor manufacturing? Get the outlook for the manufacturing supply chain in 2019 and beyond?Stop by our booth or connect with any of our co-exhibitors in the Smart Starts Here Pavilion at booth 40731 in the Sands Expo Hall A. Co-exhibitors include:Advantest – A world-class technology company, Advantest is a premier manufacturer of measuring instruments used in the design and production of electronic instruments and systems. The company also focuses on research and development (R D) for emerging markets that benefit from advancements in nanotech and terahertz technologies and has introduced multi-vision metrology scanning electron microscopes essential to photomask manufacturing, as well as a groundbreaking 3D imaging and analysis tool.Altergy – Alertgy’s Glucose Monitor is a biosensor-based wristband device that provides non-invasive, real-time blood glucose monitoring for diabetics. The device gives both patients and healthcare professionals on-demand access to blood glucose levels via a smartphone application. C2MI – C2MI is the largest microelectronic innovation centre in Canada. Offering state-of-the-art equipment dedicated mainly to advanced packaging and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), the centre hosts more than 250 R D scientists. Collaboration and synergy among our partners promote rapid commercialization of advanced prototypes.CHASM – CHASM Advanced Materials is a leading developer and manufacturer of printed electronics materials and battery materials based on proprietary carbon nanotube and ink/coating technologies.Kent Displays – Kent Displays is a global leader in unique eWriter display technology, with expertise in research, development, roll-to-roll manufacturing, and consumer packaged goods design and assembly using the eWriter technology. Kent displays also commercializes and sells the eWriter technology under its brand Boogie Board in a number of global retail markets. mCube – mCube makes the smallest motion sensors in the world. As a technology leader, mCube aspires to be the enabler for the Internet of Moving Things by putting a MEMS motion sensor on anything that moves. With over 500M units shipped, mCube continues to provide the world’s most advanced inertial sensors.Mitsui Chemical – Mitsui Chemical provides chemicals and gases for solutions in energy, agri-system, medical, IoT, and related fields. Mitsui specializes in advanced materials for automotive, ophthalmic lenses, dental, nonwovens, agrochemicals, and packaging. N5 Sensors – N5 Sensors manufactures chip-scale gas sensors that provides reliable gas detection in small-footprint packages. N5’s patented gas sensor technology represents a new era in low-power, microscale gas and chemical sensing that aims to replace conventional gas sensors. N5 is currently offering sensors and modules for integration. Its platform technology enables development of sensors for different gases ranging from toxics such as chlorine, nitrogen dioxide, to explosives such as hydrogen and methane, to environmental gases such as carbon dioxide.OMRON – OMRON Corporation is a global leader in the field of automation based on its core technology of "Sensing Control + Think." OMRON's business fields cover a broad spectrum, ranging from industrial automation and electronic components to automotive electronic components, social infrastructure systems, healthcare, and environmental solutions. Established in 1933, OMRON has over 36,000 employees worldwide providing products and services in 117 countries. In the field of industrial automation, OMRON supports manufacturing innovation by providing advanced automation technologies and products, as well as through extensive customer support, to help create a better society. PlayNitride – PlayNitride’s PixeLEDTM display can be used in addition to traditional displays. Focused on GaN-based MicroLEDs, PlayNitride, a fabless company, offers an innovative mass transfer process and SMAR.TechTM pixel repair technology. PlayNitride also provides a broad range of products and services including research and development in the field of compound semiconductors.Si-Ware - Si-Ware Systems' NeoSpectra specializes in the design and manufacturing of Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) powered miniature Fourier Transform InfraRed (FT-IR) spectrometers, or spectral sensors. Its sensors are affordable, robust, and easily adapted for a diverse range of industries.TEL - A leading global provider of semiconductor and flat panel display (FPD) production equipment, Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL) develops, manufactures and sales a wide range of products. All of TEL's semiconductor and FPD production equipment product lines maintain high market shares in their respective global segments. TEL provides outstanding products and services to customers through a global network of approximately 75 locations in 16 countries in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.ULVAC - ULVAC is a leading supplier of production equipment for the semiconductor, FPD and solar cell industries. Semiconductor products include MEMS release equipment, the ENTRON metallization system with PVD/CVD/ALD capability, etching systems for various applications including solutions for LED, power device and non-volatile memory. The systems and components are designed with innovative production technology for cost-effective device fabrication.Uneo - UneoTM offers high-quality sensor manufacturing services and product module design and consultation support to shorten product design cycles.Heidi Hoffman is senior director of Technology Communities Marketing at SEMI.

The Single Device Traceability Task Force emerged from SEMI CAST’s identification of the need for device traceability through the supply chain — not just traceability for devices but for component parts such as semiconductor die, lead frames, epoxy, bond wires, and printed circuit boards. Eventually the work led to a draft document and preparation for SEMI’s standardization process.The Single Device Traceability Task Force’s charter is “To develop standards enabling traceable device-level identification (ID) throughout the IC manufacturing, test, and assembly processes to the point of use in the final system.” The scope of this work is to develop standard(s) focusing on key concepts, behaviors, and requirements as well as standards for enabling device ID and traceability, with considerations for various types of implementations. In addition, the Single Device Traceability Task Force is looking at anti-counterfeiting, which is closely associated with traceability.The motivation for this particular traceability standard comes from systems companies that purchase and use semiconductors in boards and systems. These companies need the ability to track devices through the supply chain for various reasons. They do not want an ad hoc situation where each system vendor develops its own requirements and specifications for device traceability. They want a standard to reduce traceability’s cost and complexity.In effect, customers want a standard that can be cited in a purchase order to their suppliers. This will require the supplier to mark (ECID, 2D code, RFID, etc.) their products with an ID unique for that supplier. The customer will verify the ability to read the ID and will reject devices that cannot be read, or disagree with the shipping information. This arrangement should propagate throughout the supply chain. As a result, the traceability draft standard developed by the Single Device Traceability Task Force looks at traceability from a system integrator’s perspective.Figure 1 captures the business problem for device traceability. Figure 1: Single Device Identification and Traceability Needs Permeate the Semiconductor Industry.Each time that a company ships product to the next company in the supply chain, it’s desirable to have traceability for the products being shipped while preserving the security of the information associated with those products. Initially, the only information that should be transferred is the device identification. In other words, the device traceability ID should not identify what the device is, nor should it provide any additional information relating to the device or its manufacture. In addition, the Traceability ID should not specify the number of devices shipped, the lot number associated with the devices, or any other information that might be of value to hackers or competitors. There is quite justifiable paranoia about the security of this information based on lessons learned.However, the whole point of traceability is to be able to backtrack a device through the supply chain when there’s a problem. Ultimately, any QA effort will need to know where the device was manufactured, when it was manufactured, the conditions under which it was manufactured, and other details that might help to discover the root cause of any problems.To get the additional information needed to troubleshoot a quality or manufacturing problem, a business relationship and NDAs (shown in Figure 1) must be in place between the various member companies in the supply chain. Traceability IDs based on the Single Device Identification and Traceability Standard will not carry that sort of information. They will simply allow analytic data to be obtained through appropriate business relationships.Figure 2 illustrates the types of fact finding that a Single Device Identification and Traceability standard would enable. Figure 2: Types of fact finding enabled by a Single Device Identification and Traceability standard. In this example, a Fabless or System manufacturer (shown in the center of the figure) might make an assembly that incorporates an MCM (multi-chip module) obtained from an OSAT (outsourced assembly and test) vendor. The MCM would bear a traceability ID on or inside the package. If a failure occurs in the MCM, the Fabless vendor contacts the OSAT, using an existing business relationship and NDA, and requests a comprehensive manufacturing report for the specific device using the traceability ID to identify the device in question. The OSAT then supplies a report to the Fabless company that provides the requested manufacturing data and any additional traceability IDs for the component parts in the MCM.The component traceability IDs in the OSAT’s report provide the Fabless vendor with the ability to track the MCM’s component die and package back to the semiconductor foundries and packaging vendor where these components were manufactured. These traceability IDs allow the Fabless vendor to request manufacturing reports for the components in question from the supplying foundries and the package vendor. Note that the reason that the reports go directly from the semiconductor foundries to the Fabless vendor as shown in Figure 2 is that the OSAT may not have comprehensive information about the function of these die and the Fabless vendor may want to keep that information private.The proposed new standard is called the “Specification for Single Device Traceability for the Supply Chain” and is SEMI Draft Document #6450. It addresses the first part of the systems integrators’ desire of being able to hold their suppliers accountable for having an established traceability scheme that would permit data analysis should the need arises. As of the end of November, the ballot proposal passed Technical Committee review and will undergo a procedural review process as part of the SEMI Standards development requirements. Once, these approval requirements are met, the specification will be prepared for publication and ready for industry adoption. Meanwhile, SEMI’s CAST Working Group and Standards Task Force will continue standardization efforts for device security and anti-counterfeiting. To join SEMI Standards activity, visit SEMI Standards or go directly to the Standards Membership Application.Dave Huntley is in business development at PDF Solutions.

Gas plasmas have become a fundamental building block in many semiconductor manufacturing processes. Plasma torches used to create these gas plasmas have three components: an induction coil, a plasma confinement tube, and a gas distributor or torch head that introduces multiple gases into the torch. RF generators supply the high-frequency electrical energy needed to transform the plasma-forming gases flowing through the torch, typically oxygen or a fluorine-bearing gas, into a plasma. The RF generators used for semiconductor manufacturing typically operate in the low megahertz or tens of megahertz frequency range and are expected to output high RF power at those frequencies for long periods. For example, ALD and CVD processes use RF generators with output powers on the order of a few kilowatts.About three years ago, a major semiconductor device maker experienced a recurring problem with its RF generators. The company found that more than half of the RF generators it deployed in its manufacturing lines were failing within the first two years of service. Further, the same model RF generators obtained from the same RF generator vendor simply were not behaving similarly when used for exactly the same processes under exactly the same conditions. Nor were these supposedly identical generators operating for consistent lengths of time before failing. Clearly there was variation from one generator to the next, even within the same model.A further complication occurred during procurement of these RF generators. Procurement people were acquiring generators using general specification requirements and these requirements were, at times, opaque to the intended process application. In some cases, equipment was being purchased in bulk quantities and then assigned to different processes on the semiconductor manufacturing lines. When these generators were deployed, they had not been designed or optimized for the specific task to which they were assigned, exacerbating the reliability problem.The RF generator suppliers felt that they would be able to supply more reliable generators if they could collaborate with their customers so that they could purpose-build their generators for the intended uses. However, the semiconductor makers preferred to keep the specifics of the manufacturing process applications for these generators proprietary, for obvious reasons. To make matters worse, customers did not always return failed units to RF generator vendors for analysis. Instead, the RF generators were sometimes sent out to be refurbished by third parties or repair depots, and then redeployed. As a result, failure analysis proved challenging to obtain.This is exactly the type of situation that SEMI’s Semiconductor Component, Instrument and Subsystem (SCIS) technical community exists to address. SCIS develops test methods aimed at measuring component defects for the greater semiconductor manufacturing community. SCIS tackled this RF generator problem and developed a standard test method for measuring specific RF generator characteristics. Using this test method, RF generator manufacturers can publish results for their generators in a standardized way that allows their customers to make fair, application-specific comparisons among models and vendors.Many aspects of an RF generator needed to be considered. A key aspect that interested integrated device makers (IDMs) and capital equipment OEMs was a transient-response test for RF generators.A transient-response test standard established by the SEMI-E135 standard did exist, but its tests were run only with 50-ohm RF output loads. SCIS decided to expand this transient-response test by adding high- and low-impedance load tests to the existing 50-ohm load test.The initial response to this plan was not enthusiastic. The semiconductor makers feared that this simple expansion of an existing test standard would not produce a test regimen that would help solve what they considered to be the real problem: RF generator reliability. However, a major semiconductor equipment OEM differed, and felt that the two additional load conditions would provide a much better understanding of an RF generator’s capabilities. A second major semiconductor equipment OEM also got involved by providing additional, valuable feedback on the developing RF generator testing standard.In the end, the general feeling in the community is that this newly revised standard levels the playing field and makes it easier for customers to compare RF generators from different generator vendors. Now that this revised SEMI-E135 standard with the additional output load resistances has been published, the SCIS technical community has gained broader support and is now digging into the creation of a reliability test standard for RF generators to meet the greater semiconductor manufacturing community’s strong need for such a standard.How SEMI Standards are MadeThis sequence of events illustrates how standards are developed at SEMI. The SCIS technical community (or some other technical community within SEMI) develops and incubates test methods until a document is ready for standardization. At that point, a SEMI Standards task force is created. Companies within SCIS work with the task force (or become the task force) to ready the document for standardization. For the SEMI-E135 revision, the list of participating companies encompassed the entire semiconductor manufacturing community including RF generator suppliers, semiconductor capital equipment OEMs, and IDMs. All stakeholders participate.Figure 1 illustrates the sequence of events that occurred during the revision of the SEMI-E135 standard, after the test methods had been developed by SCIS as discussed above. Figure 1: Timeline for SEMI-E135 RF generator test standard revision after SCIS had developed the new load tests. Balloting, as illustrated in Figure 1, is the main way that SEMI obtains global consensus in the standards-making process. To achieve this, SEMI sends out the standard ballot proposal, or in this case a major revision of an existing standard. The changes to SEMI-E135 were sufficiently extensive that it was treated as a complete rewrite to this standard.On first ballot, the revised SEMI-E135 standard received several rejection votes, which also included suggested modifications that would remove the objections. These ballot rejections caused the proposed standard to be further revised, with both technical as well as editorial changes, triggering a SEMI Standards process called a Ratification Ballot. This approach takes less time than starting the balloting process over again. The final revised standard was published in September 2018.Having all stakeholders participate in the early development of the revised standard helped move the standard through the balloting process immensely, but customer participation was especially important. In the end, the semiconductor device makers and equipment OEMs are the ultimate beneficiaries of a standard like SEMI-E135. When end customers help to drive a standard’s development, there’s added pressure to move the standard along in the standardization process and the standard is far more likely to be useful for their purposes.And that’s a very good thing.For those looking to learn more about SCIS or engage in ongoing efforts, please contact Paul Trio, senior manager of Strategic Initiatives at SEMI, at [email protected].

Global Manufacturing Growth has Slowed, but is Still Positive (Chart 1)Most key countries/regions saw a slowdown in growth in March based on their respective Purchasing Managers Indices. And in one case – South Korea – manufacturing moved into contraction. February 2018 March 2018 Japan 54.1 53.1 South Korea 50.3 49.1 Taiwan 56.0 55.3 China 51.6 51.0 Europe 58.6 56.6 USA 60.8 59.3 PMI Points to More Modest Expansion (Chart 2)The global Purchasing Managers Index is a timely and readily available leading indicator for both world semiconductor and semiconductor capital equipment shipments. PMI values greater than 50 indicate expanding manufacturing activity. See www.markiteconomics.com for PMI values for all major countries.Recent semiconductor equipment, semiconductor and PMI 3-month (3/12) world growth rates were: SEMI Equipment +29% February Semiconductors +21% February PMI (squared) +4% March The PMI leading indicator now points to more modest but still positive growth ahead. Semiconductor Industry Still has Legs (Chart 3)Another useful and timely leading indicator is a composite of monthly Taiwan Chip Foundry sales. Taiwan-listed companies publish their revenues about 10 days after the month closes. Chart 3 compares the composite monthly revenues of 14 Taiwan listed foundries vs. global semiconductor sales. Due to Lunar New year shutdowns, February 2018 was weak but foundry sales rebounded in March. Chip demand appears to be holding! Walt [email protected]