Meet us at SEMICON Europa 2023

Virtual metrology, i.e. the prediction of workpiece characteristics using machine and process parameter data, has become common practice in semiconductor manufacturing. However, these digital process twins tend to be quantitatively inaccurate. They sometimes decalibrate over time, especially when environmental conditions are difficult to control or the influences themselves are unknown. In this presentation, we present a generic closed-loop approach that shows how to combine physical and virtual metrology to push the limits of precision manufacturing in terms of accuracy. Following the ultimate goal of autonomous production, process start-up and cycle times can be massively reduced. The degree of automation is increased and process twins can be transferred to other setups.

The OPC-UA standard is ideally suited for creating machine-oriented communication with a software system. In the presentation, a project is presented in which a generic configurable simulation of the interfaces for client and server was provided. This makes it possible to provide communication partners with different behaviors with minimal effort, which are used as counterparts before a real implementation. By integrating the simulator into QA processes, all possible failure cases can be tested without the need to have a real machine available. In this way, many errors are detected before the actual integration into the development process.