KLA

More than 400 students from disciplines including electrical and computer engineering, materials science, physics, and business registered for the inaugural Semiconductor Day at Ohio State University.

The SEMI white paper A Vision for Electronics Supply Chain Management examines the vital importance of the electronics supply chain, current supply chain challenges, and the criticality of transparency, collaboration, and information sharing to mitigate disruptions.

SEMI High Tech U (HTU) alumnus Oindree Chatterjee discusses why she created The STEM Corner podcast, available on Spotify, where she interviews professionals in the semiconductor industry.

EMD Electronics welcomes dozens of interns into its various business functions nationwide every year. Students from under-graduate and postgraduate programs gain valuable experience in a global science and technology company connecting with colleagues across the world from day one.

The pandemic unleashed by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (which causes the disease COVID-19) has infected over 100 million and resulted in over 2.6 million deaths worldwide as of March 2021. It is well-established that this virus primarily spreads from person-to-person via respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes or even breathes (see Ref. 1-3). Subsequently, the droplets meet the eyes, or enter nose or mouth of a nearby person, or transmit when a person touches an infected surface, then contacts their eyes, nose, or mouth. Since the virus is small, 0.06–0.14 microns in diameter, many copies can be contained in or attached to emitted respiratory droplets. Droplets as small as one micron can carry enough viral load to cause an infection. A particular concern is the interaction of droplets with ventilation systems, which potentially could enhance the propagation of pathogens. This has implications on situation-specific safe distancing and the design of building filtration systems, air distribution, heating, air-conditioning and decontamination systems. A particular instance of this is the semiconductor manufacturing cleanroom, where systems and protocols are specifically designed to minimize contamination. The $440 billion global semiconductor industry depends on these cleanrooms for integrated circuits (chips), and in turn, these chips form the lifeblood of the multi-trillion-dollar global electronic systems industry. Electronic systems are now critical for just about every aspect of human life, including health, work, finances, entertainment, transportation, power grids and many others. Thus, it is critical to understand how cleanrooms can operate more safely to ensure the health of workers while maintaining productivity levels to meet increasing global demand for semiconductors. In the work described here, we analyzed particle and droplet transport via modeling, simulation [Refs 1-3], and experimentation [Ref. 4] to help guide the industry. Modeling and Simulation In this part of the work, mathematical models were developed to simulate the progressive time-evolution of the distribution of locations of particles produced by a cough. Analytical and numerical studies were undertaken. The models ascertain the range, distribution and settling time of the particles under the influence of gravity and drag from the surrounding air. Beyond qualitative trends that illustrate that large particles travel far and settle quickly – versus small particles that do not travel far and settle slowly (yet can be carried far by ambient flow) – the models provide quantitative results for distances travelled and settling times, which are needed for constructing social distancing policies and workplace protocols. Figure 1 shows examples of the results of the modeling and simulation work. Figure 1: Model of particle spreading from a person coughing, with and without a mask. (Ref. 1) Following are key insights from the modeling and simulation work (Ref. 1): Large particles travel far (launched “ballistically”) and settle quickly, while small particles do not travel far and settle slowly (when there are no ambient externally-driven flow fields). Small particles do not settle even by the end of the simulation time (4 seconds in Ref. 1). Accordingly, the simulations were also run for extremely long periods to ascertain that the “mist” of small particles remained airborne for several minutes (as predicted by the theory). For strong opposing headwind, small particles move backwards, yet still remain airborne for extended periods of time. This is by far the most dangerous case since this will encounter other persons at the torso level. Ratio of the general drag to gravity indicates that at high velocities, the dynamics are dominated by drag. For general cough conditions, there can be cases where the change in the surrounding fluid’s behavior, due to the motion of the particles and cough, may be important. One major implication of this work is that the challenge of infection must be addressed both spatially and temporally. In other words, it is necessary to maintain social distancing based on how far the virus travels, but it is also important to account for how long the virus stays at the location because of specific air patterns. On the positive side, understanding these spatio-temporal patterns accurately will enable companies to design (or re-design) ventilation and decontamination systems precisely to improve worker safety. Other aspects of this analysis entail contact tracing (Ref. 2) and decontamination (Ref. 3). Further details, including simulations, are available at https://msol.berkeley.edu/publications/. Experimentation The major vector of coronavirus spread is through respiratory droplets expelled when coughing, speaking, and breathing; and the efficacy of any safety measures depends on accurate characterization of the dispersal of these droplets. The term particle describes objects that begin their journey as a solid. The term droplet is reserved specifically for objects that are initially liquid, albeit it is important to note that droplets can evaporate and effectively transform into solid particles composed of non-evaporative material. A purpose-built room, the Cal Covid Cube, C3, was set up and utilized for this research [Thatcher et al. 4]. The C3 is a parallelepiped room that is 232 centimeters tall, 376 centimeters long and 284 centimeters wide on the inside. For experimental results to be meaningful and repeatable for scientific and practical purposes, it is essential that the experimental setup be carefully controlled and calibrated. The following precautions were taken to ensure this: Charge-free: When solid particles are released, it is critical to eliminate (or thoroughly know) static charge effects for obtaining accurate deposition patterns. Static charge effects can manifest through particle-particle interactions (affecting particle motion in flight) or particle-surface interaction (affecting deposition pattern). Two methods for the elimination of charge effects on the deposition surface were found to be effective: (1) ionized non-conductive adhesive sampling strips, and (2) grounded aluminum backed carbon sampling strips. Isothermal: The room is a converted walk-in freezer with 10.5-13 centimeter thermal insulation and located in the middle of a building, at least 5 meters away from all building walls. Temperature uniformity was checked and the C3 room temperatures were found to be isothermal within uncertainty of measurements. Quiescent: It was ensured that the room did not create uncontrolled thermal convection due to isothermal nature. Quiescence was verified with both hot-wire measurements and with free-falling particle drift observations. Isopotential: The outer and inner surfaces, including the door of the C3 were conductive aluminum and stainless steel, and copper tape were used to ensure reliable electrical connection of door, interior and exterior panels. Electric fields were surveyed and found to be negligible within precision of instruments. Other design elements: All interior surfaces were coated with black matte paint to reduce scattered light and provide uniform background for imaging measurements. The facility was located on ground floor to limit vibrations. Repeatable Launch: To emulate the release from a true cough or sneeze, and to better understand droplet motion in a canonical turbulent jet versus a cough type release, we studied different layers of complexity for the release geometry: (i) Straight round pipe (ii) Smooth 90-degree curved pipe, with a changing radius along the length of the pipe (iii) Intubation trainer doll, with realistic airways and mouth/tongue structure Figure 2 shows the experimental setup with the intubation doll in C3, with the particle/droplet release being measured after deposition on the sampling strips that appear green. Figure 2: Experimental Setup in C3 with both charge neutralized (white appearing green) and conductive (black) sampling strips placed on a conductive and grounded alignment grid [Ref. 4] We utilized both liquid droplets and solid particles. For droplets, we explored and found promise in a method of deposition analysis based on fluorescence. For particles, we explored many ways in which the smallest of thermal gradients or electrostatic charge issues can affect the data and developed practical methods to address these issues. For accurate measurement free of static charge effects even in environments where high ambient flow velocities may cause a nonconductive surface to rapidly acquire charge (e.g., clean room environment), we developed carbon-tape-based sampling strips that are cleanroom-compatible, conductive, and grounded. For analysis, we developed a cost-effective method utilizing a commercial photo negative scanner followed by image enhancement by blind deconvolution. Figure 3 shows sample results for particle deposition location along our centerline for particles in the ballistic, intermediate and aerosol regime. Figure 3: Experimental Results [Thatcher et al. 4] Following are key insights from experimental work: Significance of both static charge effects and thermal gradients in rooms for validation tests are more than usually appreciated. For modelling, accounting for the non-uniform initial particle velocity matters for the ballistic particles. For all sizes of particles, simulating the transient versus steady state significantly impacts predicted particle spread. Thermal plumes alone from humans along particle flight path can transport 50 micron particles across the room. In some situations, this was observed up to ~6 meters. There is a significant effect of Relative Humidity (RH) and temperature on droplet evaporation. The practical consequence is that, in low RH, particles spread further, with all other things being equal. (The reason is that particles shrunk more and entered the aerosol regime.) In summary, a systematic analysis of particle and droplet transport was conducted by simulation, modeling, and experimentation. We were able to develop robust, rigorous, and repeatable methodologies and draw meaningful insights that will support safer operation and productivity of semiconductor cleanrooms globally. Further, these studies will help with the design (or re-design) of ventilation and de-contamination systems that help protect both the health of humans and the economy from current and future pandemics. This article provides a high-level overview of the work, and further details will be available through a series of scientific papers that are in various phases of publication. We gratefully acknowledge the following support: Gift of the Lam Research Corporation Gifts coordinated through SEMI and provided by Advanced Energy Industries, Applied Materials, ASM, Entegris, JSR, KLA, TEL, and Wonik The 2020 Seed Fund Award from the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute at the University of California Vision Research for providing a v2640 camera to help quantify the particle velocities Graduate students Eric Thacher and Tvetene Carlson who conducted the experiments in C3 Valuable discussions with Brett Singer, Thomas Kirchstetter, Michael Sohn, Chelsea Preble of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory regarding droplet transport and COVID, and Keith Hansen on particle sampling and charge neutralization DOE Office of Science through the National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory, a consortium of DOE national laboratories focused on response to COVID-19, with funding provided by the Coronavirus CARES Act Steven Ruzin and the Biological Imaging Facility for their assistance in obtaining the high-quality fluorescence microscopy scans to validate the particle counting methodology. References Zohdi, T.I. (2020) Modeling and simulation of the infection zone from a cough, Computational Mechanics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00466-020-01875-5 Zohdi, T.I. (2020). An agent-based computational framework for simulation of global pandemic and social response on planet X, Computational Mechanics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00466-020-01886-2 Zohdi, T.I. (2020) Rapid simulation of viral decontamination efficacy with UV irradiation. Computer Methods Appl. Mech. Eng. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2020.113216 Thatcher, E., Carlson, J., Castellini, J., Sohn, M.D., Variano, E. and Makiharju S.A. (2021) Droplet and Particle Methods to Investigate Turbulent Particle Laden Jets (in preparation) Authors Evan A. Variano, Professor, Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley Simo Mäkiharju, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley Tarek I. Zohdi, Will C. Hall Endowed Chair of the UCB Computational Data Science Engineering Program, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley Pushkar P. Apte, Director of Strategic Initiatives, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute, UC Berkeley; and Strategic Technology Advisor, SEMI

Automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and their direct suppliers of parts and systems share a vision: Next-generation vehicles will be more electric, autonomous and connected. At a market size of more than $1 trillion, automotive is steadily becoming a high-tech market as cars morph into advanced technology platforms with partially or fully autonomous features. Call them semiconductors on wheels. Big players such as Google and many carmakers are investing heavily in chip advances to help drive increases in silicon content in automobiles.At SEMICON Europa, Pierrick Boulay, Solid State Lighting and Lighting Systems analyst at Yole Développement, will provide a market update on autonomous automobile trends including the state of sensors, radars, cameras and LiDARs as the industry works to increase the level of autonomy and electrification.Autonomous vehicle design can only thrive with the development of an industry standard for chip and device traceability across the supply chain. The importance of chip traceability to the automotive industry is reflected in its central role in driving a chip traceability standard.According to Heidi Hoffman, senior director of technology communities marketing at SEMI, “chip traceability is one of the next big things for the technology industry. The benefits are enormous, and the upsides – including yield enhancements, counterfeiting safeguards, and support for new applications – are plentiful. But the implementation challenges of chip traceability are also big and will require considerable effort to overcome. The biggest hurdle of all? We need to transcend industry fears by demonstrating that we can secure IP when it is shared across the hardware supply chain.” The Importance of Standards, Data Collection and Collaboration Across the Supply ChainThe automotive industry has long embraced tracing the sources of defects. Now, as the automotive and semiconductor supply chains increasingly overlap, traceability has taken on greater importance in the semiconductor industry. SEMI committees, task forces and events such as the Smart Transportation Forum at SEMICON Europa are ideal platforms for collaborating to develop new standards and best practices for the automotive industry.Earlier this year, German luxury automobile maker Audi AG became the first automotive original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to join SEMI as member, strengthening alignment across automotive supply-chain segments. At SEMICON Europa, the SMART Transportation Forum and Pavilion, staged by the SEMI Global Automotive Advisory Council (GAAC) and bolstered by the Electronic System Design Alliance, a SEMI Strategic Association Partner, will gather key stakeholders across the automotive value chain, from design and semiconductor equipment to materials and carmakers, to explore innovation opportunities in automotive electronics. SEMI Global Automotive Advisory Council (GAAC) “If the industry wants to reach the goal of zero defects, a new collaborative approach is necessary,” observed Antoine Amade, senior regional director EMEA at Entegris. At SEMICON Europa, Amade will present new ways to collaborate in reducing chip defectivity and meet other challenges in the automotive industry.More than half of semiconductor failures on the automotive assembly line today (so-called 0km failures) are traced to semiconductor fab defectivity. “The increasing semiconductor content in automobiles – driven by growth in ADAS, electrification and autonomy – has put a growing focus on the quality and reliability of these devices and their implications for consumer safety and satisfaction,” said Oreste Donzella, senior vice president and CMO at KLA.The smart manufacturing (Industry 4.0) revolution is already spurring higher performance and great efficiencies throughout the supply chain and will also be crucial to driving innovation in automotive. Smart manufacturing makes possible significant improvements in factory key performance indicators (KPI) for cycle time, on-time delivery, overall equipment effectiveness, cost and product quality.“These KPI gains are key to meeting quality levels the automotive industry must reach to support the deployment of autonomous driving vehicles,” said John R. Behnke, general manager of Final Phase Systems at INFICON. In his talk at SEMICON Europa, Behnke will provide an overview of existing, in-progress, and future smart manufacturing solutions for the semiconductor industry and their impact on the automotive supply chain. The SMART Transportation Forum, 13 November, 2019 (9:30-15:30 at ICM Munich, room 14c) at SEMICON Europa is the premier platform for key stakeholders to connect, collaborate and innovate across the automotive value chain. Automotive and semiconductor industry experts will offer insights into trends in design, semiconductor equipment and materials, and automotive innovation and the roadmap to 2030. The SMART Transportation Forum will also showcase innovations in imaging, sensing, artificial intelligence (AI), smart manufacturing and L5 mobility.Other SEMICON Europa highlights: Advanced Packaging Conference: Packaging and Test Challenges Towards High Reliability (12-13 November 2019) 23rd Fab Management Forum: Game Changers for Semiconductor Operations(11-12 November 2019) Strategic Materials Conference: Strategic Materials Enabling Industry Roadmaps(12-13 November 2019) SEMICON Europa registration is open for visitors and exhibitors. For more details, please visit the SEMICON Europa website and connect with SEMI Europe on Twitter or LinkedIn @SEMIEurope (use #SEMICONEuropa).Learn more about the SEMI chip traceability standard – SEMI T23 - Specification for Single Device Traceability for the Supply Chain – and SEMI Technology Communities.Serena Brischetto is a marketing and communications manager at SEMI Europe.

Would you buy your next hotdog in parts, from un-coordinated suppliers? For example: Get the bun from a baker, the sausage from a butcher, mustard and/or ketchup and veggies from the nearest supermarket? If yes, you may find the sausage being too small, the veggies too big for the bun, and, when you finally finished adding mustard/ketchup and start eating, you may “enjoy” a cold sausage on a soggy bun!This “hotdog example” is just a very simple way to highlight the advantages of a well-coordinated semiconductor supply chain. What may be a few dollars and cents wasted in this hotdog purchase, can become millions of dollars lost to delays and inefficiencies during the roll-out of a new electronic system.Complexity is Increasing the ChallengeThe very innovative semiconductor industry is continuing to develop more complete and complex building blocks for electronic system solutions, with the intent of making our customers’ lives easier. However, every new technology takes increasingly more time for technical and business interfaces to mature before all the semiconductor supply chain members can serve customers in a smooth, efficient and cost-effective manner. In particular, coordination between design and manufacturing has always turned out to be in the critical path.SEMI, the manufacturers’ trade organization, and the Electronic System Design (ESD) Alliance, representing electronic design automation (EDA) tools vendors, developers of intellectual property (IP = ready-made building blocks for ICs) and IC design service providers, both recognized these challenges. Late in 2018, these two industry organizations decided to jointly address this painful, costly and often a very frustrating, yet critical path and became Strategic Association Partners, The goal is to establish a well-coordinated semiconductor supply chain.To make the value propositions of this partnership highly visible and demonstrate the first joint accomplishments, SEMI’s well-known SEMICON West conference and, in its first year, ES Design West, will be conveniently co-located in San Francisco’s Moscone Center from July 9 to 11, 2019. The synchronized schedules and geographic proximity of these events not only outlines the multi-faceted interdependence of manufacturing and design but encourages and enables conference attendees to do, what previously would have been viewed as “forming cross-border relationships.” It’s a new word now — please join the path to success and expand your network!Navigating SEMICON West and ES Design WestJust in case you are not yet planning to come to San Francisco early July, please check the Agendas-at-a-Glance for SEMICON West and ES Design West, to see how broad and valuable these parallel conferences are for your business. In addition, every customer, partner and semiconductor industry supplier can, from July 9 –11, walk from one conference section to the other, arrange face-to-face meetings, in dedicated meeting rooms, with representatives from both camps and discuss, from the first project planning step to the final production ramp-up, the many topics that need to be coordinated across parts or the entire supply chain to minimize delays and/or cost over-runs.Who Will Lead the Discussions?Conference attendees can, in addition to meeting many important supply chain partners face-to-face, hear about the latest technologies and market trends from key executives in our industry. Featured speakers are: David Pellerin, Head of Global Business Development, Amazon Web Services Lisa Su, President, and CEO, AMD Gary Dickerson, President, and CEO, Applied Materials Laurent Le Faucheur, Principal Engineer, Digital Signal Processing and Machine Learning, Arm, Ltd. Renee St. Amant, Ph.D., Research Engineer in Emerging Technologies and US Innovator of the Year, ARM Dean Kamen, President DEKA Research Development, Founder First and First Global Jeffrey Welser, Ph.D., Vice President and Lab Director, IBM Research-Almaden Dean Drako, President and CEO, IC Manage, Inc. Oreste Donzella, Sr. VP Chief Marketing Officer, KLA Corporation Prakash Narain, President, and CEO, Real Intent, Inc. Aart de Geus, Chairman, and Co-CEO, Synopsys, Inc. Manish Pandy, Fellow, Synopsys, Inc. Nate Baxter, General Manager, Development and Production Group, TEL US Like in previous years, SEMICON West and ES Design West offer a range of special features, addressing Smart Manufacturing, Smart Transportation, Smart MedTech and Smart Workforce development in dedicated pavilions as well as an AI Design Forum. Also, the many exhibitors from both camps will give conference attendees convenient opportunities to get to know new supply chain partners and/or refresh long-term business relationships. Search for the exhibitors you want to meet early July here. Questions to Ask for a Well-Coordinated Semiconductor Supply ChainIf I may, I would like to ask my many friends in the manufacturing camp to spend some time in the ES Design West section and ask the exhibitors a few questions, like: What can you do to get me to profit faster? To reduce development and unit cost? To improve yield, product quality, and reliability? When can you visit my team to discuss how your company can contribute to our goals?Vice versa, I would like to encourage my friends in the design camp to spend time in the SEMICON West section and ask exhibitors what their companies offer. When talking to manufacturers of IC, passive components or circuit boards, assembly and test houses, please ask very specific questions like: How can we help you reduce iterations between you and your customers? How can we help to improve IC test programs? How can we increase the throughput of your manufacturing equipment? How can we apply machine learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to minimize equipment downtime, improve yields and/or shorten production ramp-up?I can assure you that you’ll not only win great friends “across the border” but will be very impressed by the expertise you’ll find in the other camp and the willingness for and benefits of cross-border cooperation.I look forward to meeting you at SEMICON West and ES Design West. Also, if your schedule allows, mark your calendars for the June 12 MEPTEC Luncheon at SEMI in Milpitas, June 18 for the GSA’s Silicon Summit in Santa Clara and June 25 to 27 for the IMAPS SiP Conference in Monterey, CA. Hope to see you at one or all of these important events!Article originally published in 3D InCites. Herb Reiter is president of eda 2 asic Consulting.