SBIR Phase I: Real-time Economic Sampling System

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目将解决半导体制造中高度手动的经济过程控制优化工作自动化所需的两个组件。这项创新可以创建智能实时经济采样(RES)系统，该系统将允许在多个流程步骤和产品中每天多次优化和调整采样。这使制造商S通过自适应地将抽样集中在产生最大经济回报的地方，将生产不良产品的总体经济风险降至最低。研究的两个目标是：1)研究建模和优化，以便在一小时内找到整个半导体工厂的高度优化的抽样解决方案(同时使用现成的负担得起的PC硬件)，以及2)使RES系统能够直接从汇总的检查和产量数据中实时地估计所需的专门的产量参数。如今，半导体制造商仅限于偶尔进行过程控制规划，进行耗时的离线分析。工程师们还花时间进行手动特别调整，以便在需要的地方直接取样，而不是真的知道他们可能会对操作造成什么其他损害。与此同时，有价值的产品在失控情况下被浪费，如果自动经济抽样可以收集目前生产风险最高的数据，就可以更快地检测到这些情况。RES系统将进入半导体行业的一个快速增长的领域，用于过程控制的支出从2000年的10%上升到2007年的19%(来源：Dataquest)，市场规模约为74亿美元。如果成功，RES工具可能会对半导体工艺行业产生重大影响。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will address two components required to automate the highly manual work of economic process control optimization in semiconductor manufacturing. The intelligent Real-time Economic Sampling (RES) system that can be created with the innovation will allow sampling to be optimized and adjusted many times per day across multiple process steps and products. This minimizes a manufacturer?s overall economic risk of producing bad products by adaptively focusing sampling where it gives the greatest financial return. The two research objectives are: 1) research modeling and optimization such that highly optimized sampling solutions for a whole semiconductor factory can be found in one hour (while using off-the-shelf affordable PC hardware), and 2) enable the RES system to estimate specialized yield parameters needed in real-time directly from aggregated inspection and yield data. Semiconductor manufacturers today are limited to occasional process control planning with time-consuming off-line analysis. Engineers also spend time doing manual ad-hoc adjustments to direct sampling where it is needed, while not really knowing what other harm they could be doing to the operation. Meanwhile valuable products are being wasted during out-of-control situations that can be detected faster if automatic economic sampling could collect data where the production risk is currently the highest. The RES system would step into a fast growing segment in the semiconductor industry, spending on process control went from 10% in 2000 to 19% in 2007 (Source: Dataquest), about $7.4 billion market. If successful, the RES tool could have a significant impact on the semiconductor process industry.