Integrating Process Fundamentals, Facility Design and Production Control in Semiconductor Manufacturing Systems

半导体产业对国家经济福祉的重要性得到广泛认可，这导致许多不同学科研究这一领域的问题。过程分析、设计和表征已经在电气、化学和材料工程文献中讨论过。然而，这一研究集中在证明在研究环境中生产功能设备的可行性，以一种与生产设施中遇到的生产计划和控制问题隔离的方式。虽然越来越多的研究人员对该行业的生产计划和控制问题进行了研究，但这些工作还没有被用来提供更有效的单元工艺设计的见解，而是接受了现有的单元工艺和设施设计。有一个新兴的需要跨学科的努力，以开发一个集成的框架，其中解决设计和控制半导体制造设施的问题，再加上对材料加工和表征的基本理解。研究人员的经验和与半导体行业合作伙伴的互动表明，在单元工艺选择和设计、工艺环境和微电子材料特性之间的相互关系以及生产控制和设施布局方法之间存在相当大的相互作用。这项研究旨在对薄膜沉积和蚀刻过程中的这些相互作用进行基本的定量理解。基础研究，以发展对潜在材料加工操作之间复杂动态的理解，它们之间的相互作用，以及它们的环境，这将使集成的，创新的方法被开发用于半导体制造设施的设计和控制。这些知识将用于为这些类型的工作中心开发新颖，有效的调度方法，并研究如何将不同的工作中心组合成具有成本效益且易于控制的制造系统。这项研究将需要详细的单元过程模型和生产系统设计、控制和性能评价技术之间强有力的持续协同作用。

9302099 Uzsoy The widely acknowledged importance of the semiconductor industry to the economic well being of the country has led many different disciplines to study problems in this area. Process analysis, design and characterization have been addressed in the electrical, chemical and materials engineering literature. However, this body of research has concentrated on demonstrating the feasibility of producing functional devices in a research environment, in a manner isolated from the production planning and control problems encountered in manufacturing facilities. While production planning and control problems in this industry have been studied by a growing body of researchers, such work has not been used to provide insights into the design of more effective unit processes and has accepted existing unit process and facility designs as given. There is an emerging need for an interdisciplinary effort to develop an integrated framework within which to address the problem of designing and controlling semiconductor manufacturing facilities coupled with a fundamental understanding of materials processing and characterization. The researchers experiences and interactions with industrial partners in the semiconductor industry indicate there is considerable interaction among unit process selection and design, interrelationships between process environments and microelectronic material properties, and production control and facility layout methods. This research is directed towards developing a basic, quantitative understanding of these interactions for thin film deposition and etching processes. Fundamental studies to develop an understanding of the complex dynamics among underlying material processing operations, their interactions with each other, and their environments that will enable integrated, innovative methodologies to be developed for design and control of semiconductor manufacturing facilities. Such knowledge will be used to develop novel, effective, scheduling methodologies for these types of workcenters and to examine how different workcenters may be combined into manufacturing systems that are cost effective and easy to control. The research will require a strong continuous synergy between detailed unit process models and techniques for production system design, control and performance evaluation.