On the Throughput of Clustered Photolithography Tools: Wafer Advancement and Intrinsic Equipment Loss

For clustered photolithography tools we develop two analytic models characterizing the throughput. The models are essentially distinguished by the manner in which wafers advance through the tool and allow for many important features present in practical manufacturing systems. Such features include a diversity of lot populations (with different process times at each module) and disturbances to the ideal processing behavior such as delays to begin processing and delays incurred at specific modules. Our models thus allow us to quantify important classes of intrinsic equipment loss.