1999 Editors' Choice Best Product Awards

Applied Materials

Applied Materials (Santa Clara, Calif.) has three winning products in this year's competition.

The Endura Electra Cu Barrier & Seed performs preclean, Ta or TaN barrier deposition and copper seed layer deposition in a continuous vacu um to provide oxide-free interfaces. The company's ion metal plasma (IMP) technology is used to deposit an amorphous, low-resistivity phase of Ta and a <111> copper surface with 40% bottom coverage in dual-damascene via and trench structures.

The Producer CVD system provides both PECVD and SACVD deposition of premetal, intermetal and blanket dielectric layers. Its twin chamber design allows it to process two to six wafers simultaneously. The system can deposit TEOS oxides, silane oxides, nitrides and the company's advanced dielectric materials. The company claims the highest throughput per footprint area, and the system includes integrated metrology for advanced thickness control.

SEMVision is an automated defect review and classification SEM designed for in-line use in production. It uses multiple perspective SEM imaging (MPSI) to redetect defects found by optical or e-beam imspection and perform automatic defect classification (ADC). The ADC helps determine the cause and characteristics of defects to speed yield ramping and excursion control.

Applied Materials' Endura Electra Cu Barrier & Seed


Applied Materials' SEMVision

Boin

WAFERMAP for Windows 95/NT from Boin (Tomerdingen, Germany) provides data collection, editing analysis and visualization for measured parameters on semiconductor wafers. It can import data from many different metrology tools, manual and automatic, handling the various data formats. It allows data editing and interpolation using any user-defined site distribution, and it provides wafer map comparison capability. Results can be exported in a variety of formats for use in other applications.

Boin's WAFERMAP for Windows 95/NT

Entegris

ESEC

ESEC's (Phoenix) Gold Ball Wire Bonder 3018 features a 5-in² bonding area suitable for most substrate types. Its recipe import and part indexing capabilities allow new recipe creation and changeover in a matter of a few minutes. Once a recipe has been created, it can be ported to other 3018 bonders with no tweaking. The bondhead has an airbearing design to improve its lifetime, and its optical alignment system provides production capability down to 60 µm pitches.

i2 Technologies

The RHYTHM Semiconductor Solution from i2 Technologies (Irving, Texas) coordinates business processes from strategic planning to second-by-second execution consistent with global business priorities. By tuning fab execution to the other components in the supply chain, a fab can significantly reduce WIP, inventory and production cycle time, as well as prioritize manufacturing of key products more effectively. The semiconductor solution is a set of templates specific to semiconductor manufacturing applied to the RHYTHM suite, making it an off-the-shelf solution.

KLA-Tencor

KLA-Tencor's (San Jose, Calif.) ASET-F5 measures the thickness, refractive index and extinction coefficients of single- and multiple-layer films without referencing or extrapolating. It uses ultraviolet spectroscopic ellipsometry to measure ultra-thin films and film stacks deposited by diffusion and CVD. Broadband dual-beam spectrophotometry measures films for etch, CMP and advanced lithography applications. The combination measures across a continuous spectrum from 190 to 800 nm.

Kulicke & Soffa Industries

Kulicke & Soffa's (Willow Grove, Pa.) model 8028 automatic ball bonder has a 50 x 65 mm bond area and can bond up to 12 wires per second on a 60 µm pitch. It features advanced motion control and looping algorithms to provide a wide variety of looping processes. Its SECS/GEM communication interfaces allow integration with multiple information management systems. Recipes can be created offline and ported to multiple bonders. The company claims the lowest cost of ownership among wire bonders.

Lam Research

The Teres CMP system from Lam Research (Fremont, Calif.) uses a high-speed linear belt approach to maintain high removal rates while reducing downforce. Cutting the downforce reduces the likelihood of dishing and corrosion, as well as the sensitivity of these problems to feature size. The choice of downforce and pad speed is flexible, allowing high downforce if desired. Its air-bearing platten is designed to control wafer uniformity independently of removal rate. The multi-wavelength optical endpoint detection system allows robust endpoint detection algorithms.

Leica Microsystems

The INS 3000 ADC NT from Leica Microsystems (Deerfield, Ill.) is an offline image-based defect management system that performs automatic review of defects, redection and classification of defects. Trending by defect type and identifying the source of killer defects, as well as initial detection, are automated to avoid mistakes caused by operator error and fatigue. The system's optics provide high image quality, which allows higher throughput and more reliable classification.

MKS Instruments

The HPS Effluent Management Subsystem from MKS (Andover, Mass.) is a collection of modules adaptable to specific effluent-handling applications. Heated valves and pipes prevent condensation of most effluent components. Virtual Wall pipes use a heated envelope of nitrogen on the inside to prevent condensation and contact polymerization of effluents such as TEOS. Process-specific traps remove effluent condensables at the desired points in the flow.

Palomar Technologies

This year's Grand Award winner, the CBT 6000 wire bonder from Palomar Technologies (Vista, Calif.), features a 12 x 6 in. bond area and a bond speed of 8 to 9 wires per second. It allows the use of wide leadframes, or dual leadframe arrangements for continuous bonding operation. It also performs wafer-level wirebonding, wafer-level Au ball bumping and ball-in-corner bonding for read-write head applications. Its 0.82-in. rectilinear z-stroke gives deep access capability, and its network communications capability aids in overall throughput enhancement.

SensArray

The Active Plasma Thermal Optical System (APTOS) from SensArray (Santa Clara, Calif.) provides real-time, in situ temperature measurements from multiple points on a wafer in oxide, poly and metal etch systems under plasma. A silicon cover strip protects the fiber optic sensors in the probe wafer from plasma bombardment, as well as ambient light interference. Its accuracy of ±1°C and repeatability of ±0.5°C compare favorably with typical temperature-sensitive decal resolutions.

SEZ Group

SEZ's (Phoenix) Spin-Processor 303 performs up to three wet processing steps on 300 mm wafers for applications such as backside film removal, stress relief, metallic and organic contamination removal and frontside film thinning. The wafer rests on a jet of inert gas, which protects one side of the wafer while the other is being processed. The wafer is transferred vertically between chambers, each of which has its own inlets and outlets.

STI

WAV-1000 automatic visual inspection (AVI) system from Semiconductor Technologies and Instruments (STI, Richardson, Texas) detects defects as small as 3 µm in pre- and post-probe inspections and pre- and post-bump inspections. It uses the associated prober as the wafer handler, and it can inspect a 6-in. wafer in less than 90 seconds. Options include a wafer handler, 2-D and 3-D bump inspection, and 1 µm resolution.

Tokyo Seimitsu (TSK)

The UF200 wafer prober from TSK positions wafers up to 200 mm in diameter within 4 µm for probing with cantilevered, membrane and vertical probe cards. The system is designed to eliminate alignment problems from system vibration and inconsistent pressure to the chuck. The network controllable prober supports thin wafer probing, varying die sizes on a wafer, multi-die parallel test, probe and ink mark inspection, and OCR wafer ID capability.

Ultratech Stepper

Saturn Spectrum 3 wafer stepper from Ultratech Stepper (San Jose, Calif.) provides g, h, and i-line capabilities for flip-chip lithography applications. The system uses one set of broadband 1X optics, and it can image photoresistive films from 1 to 100 µm thick. Its alignment system provides automatic focus adjustment, orientation and alignment using any alignment marks that may exist, making it suitable for subcontract bumping applications.

W. L. Gore and Associates

Via on Chip Pitch Substrates from W.L. Gore and Associates (Eau Claire, Wis.) are based on the company's expanded PTFE dielectric, Microlam, and have the capability of placing interconnect vias on the same pitch as the die I/O pads. This allows design flexibility to route more power and ground traces, shrink the die or maximize the number of signal I/Os for higher performance. Its CTE is isotropically matched to copper to maintain the reliability of the interconnects.

White Knight Fluid Handling

AT Series Pumps from White Knight Fluid Handling (Hemlock, Mich.) feature all-Teflon construction for parts contacting the fluid including a tongue-and-groove seal instead of an O-ring. Movement of the pump drive is slowed at the end of each stroke to reduce pulsation without external suppressors. Synchronized threads are designed to improve the strength of connections, and optional ceramic shuttle valve parts improve reliability in high-head-pressure or viscous-fluid applications.