A color vision inspection system for integrated circuit manufacturing

Author

Barth, Matthew ; Hirayama, David ; Beni, Gerardo ; Hackwood, Susan

Author_Institution

Coll. of Eng., California Univ., Riverside, CA, USA

Volume

5

Issue

4

fYear

1992

fDate

11/1/1992 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

290

Lastpage

301

Abstract

An inspection system is introduced that can measure critical film thicknesses, segment IC images, and detect an entire class of color defects that would be difficult or impossible to detect with typical gray-scale imaging. This inspection is carried out on a unique multiwindow parallel hardware architecture which allows the inspection process to be performed at high speeds. The inspection is based on image understanding techniques and is carried out in a two-stage fashion where defects are first rapidly hypothesized and then verified in detail only within the salient regions of an image, thus eliminating a large amount of irrelevant data. The system has been tested on numerous IC images and shows promising results

Keywords

automatic optical inspection; image processing equipment; image recognition; integrated circuit manufacture; parallel architectures; thickness measurement; AOI; color vision inspection system; critical film thicknesses; image understanding techniques; integrated circuit manufacturing; multiwindow parallel hardware architecture; segment IC images; Circuit testing; Design automation; Inspection; Integrated circuit manufacture; Integrated circuit reliability; Integrated circuit testing; Machine vision; Manufacturing processes; Pixel; Very large scale integration;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Semiconductor Manufacturing, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0894-6507

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/66.175361

Filename

175361