A real-time equipment monitoring and fault detection system

In semiconductor fabrication processes, real-time equipment monitoring and fault detection become critical as most problems reveal themselves first on the equipment performance and much later on the wafer quality. The sooner we can detect the problem, the lower the production loss. The goal of this paper is to present an integrated equipment monitoring approach for a PECVD tool. The approach will include: (1) simultaneous monitoring scheme: a dartboard display of real-time data that provides an easy reading of the equipment´s overall status, (2) system health index: an index that evaluates the equipment´s overall health, and (3) analysis functions that include various charting functions, real-time SPC, run-to-run SPC, and other advanced SPC functions. The system has been implemented in TSMC FAB IV for testing. The preliminary results show that the proposed system is an effective tool for real-time monitoring and fault detection