As semiconductor fabrication pushes the boundaries of physics and chemistry, machine learning (ML) is sought to tackle complex design and process interactions. For advanced nodes, robust process control is essential early in development cycle due to the complexity of the process flow. Additionally, during the first stage of a new product introduction (NPI) in the fab, design validation is a crucial step with only minimal margin of allowed error. Rapid advancements in ML and availability of big data have allowed semiconductor fabs to analyze large amounts of both design and fab data, to make informed decisions and enhance processes through pattern and trend identification. In this talk, we will present the details with results on using Calibre® Fab Insights tool to enable smart manufacturing in three major applications areas within the fab, that can ultimately help in accelerating the yield ramp. First area is process monitoring (PMON), where we leverage usage of design and process features to prescribe product dependent process adjustments which in turn help accelerate NPI, improve automated process control (APC), provide actionable insights to identify parameters that most impact any given process step. The second area is tool monitoring (TMON), where the ML model can help early detection of tool drifts, that cause tool to go out of control (OOC), by providing alerts to perform a predictive maintenance. This can reduce the process/tool tuning time to bring them back to spec after a preventive maintenance (PM) cycle. The final area of application highlighted is virtual cross metrology (CM) where a digital metrology twin is created that enables prediction of metrological measurements at every intermediate step along with wafer maps. Additionally, root cause analysis (RCA) to highlight non-intuitive and overlooked parameters that systematically may contribute to yield results can be obtained. These applications and use cases pave the way to use smart manufacturing concepts to decouple, isolate and quantify the individual influences each step in the fab imposes on different products at various stages of the fabrication flow. This ultimately helps provide an accelerated yield ramp curve that translates into cost and time savings.
