An interesting history of metrology tools

[Artificer60]

I thought this was an interesting piece on the history of inline inspection tools and their effects on die yield.

 

[Paul2]

What people mean under the "metrology"... machinery for measuring layer thickness, resist properties, cmp defects, effects thermal processes, electrical characterisation, and particularly tools for wafer thickness/warpage/unevenness measurement are all, technically speaking, "metrology toools" too.

My mentor told that back in the nineties, they were completely at the mercy of wafer suppliers. Bad wafers come, yields tanks, and they have no way to know, if it is something on their side has changed, or it is a bad material input, so they always kept a stock of known good wafer batches to check against that.

 

[Barnsley]

What people mean under the "metrology"... machinery for measuring layer thickness, resist properties, cmp defects, effects thermal processes, electrical characterisation, and particularly tools for wafer thickness/warpage/unevenness measurement are all, technically speaking, "metrology toools" too.

My mentor told that back in the nineties, they were completely at the mercy of wafer suppliers. Bad wafers come, yields tanks, and they have no way to know, if it is something on their side has changed, or it is a bad material input, so they always kept a stock of known good wafer batches to check against that.

Mask is CD and Registration with regards metrology.

We also had tool for measuring glass black flatness