Suppliers' Application Labs: A Growing Resource
Peter Singer, Editor-in-Chief -- Semiconductor International, 12/1/2000
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At a Glance | | |
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Although still used for these purposes, many equipment and materials suppliers have invested heavily in their demo labs over the last few years — some building new facilities — to the point where they can now closely replicate how their customers use their tools in a full-blown production line. Call them what you like — demo labs, application labs, process labs or integration centers — these facilities are allowing suppliers to work in unprecedented ways with their customers and research partners, while also optimizing their own in-house R&D activities.
With the ability to replicate a good chunk of process flow, suppliers can study integration issues and process problems, come up with tested fixes to problems, and conduct in-house research and joint development projects with customers and other suppliers.
| 1. Copper/low-k damascene structures can be fabricated at the Novellus Building 4000 facility. (Source: Novellus) |
"The demonstration facility at Novellus has gone through a significant transition over the last three or four years," noted Wilbert van den Hoek, executive vice president of integration and advanced development at Novellus Systems (San Jose). "Previously, it functioned as our own internal development facility for new processes and as a site to demonstrate the capabilities of our tools. Those demonstrations were all focused on a unit process performance, showing specifications of the films we deposit.
"Over the last three years, however, customers have asked us to continue to do that, but also demonstrate how the films are integrated into a process sequence."
To that end, Novellus has brought equipment into its Building 4000 Customer Integration Center (Fig. 1) from its Damascus Alliance partners Lam, SpeedFam-IPEC and GaSonics. The center also includes a full complement of electrical testing and metrology tools, including electromigration test equipment. "We are now able to demonstrate how our films fit into a process sequence and demonstrate to them that we understand the integration issues," said van den Hoek. Building 4000 has 30,000 ft2 of Class 1 cleanroom with 20-25 tools, most of them capable of 300 mm processing.
| 2. Applied Materials' Equipment and Process Integration Center (EPIC), located in Santa Clara, Calif. (Source: Applied Materials) |
"We expect QualiTau's expertise in electromigration testing systems to enhance our ability to test the reliability of copper and low-k interconnects as part of the development and characterization of our process module products," said Dennis Yost, managing director of the EPIC facility.
One of the key capabilities at EPIC is its combination of advanced defect and electrical test toolsets. "We can do in-line defect inspection and correlate it to electrical test," Yost said. "Our ability to focus on the electrical defect density enables significantly more mature Process Module (multiple, sequential processes) performance with guaranteed inputs and outputs. This translates directly to higher yields for our customers."
The main benefit
Perhaps the main advantage of advanced application labs is that by enabling equipment and materials suppliers to gain an understanding of integration issues early on, they can help IC makers reduce ramp-up time for new processes and get new products to market more quickly.
"That's really what the high-end electronics industry has to contend with," said Robert Rhoades, director of advanced process technology for Rodel Inc. (Phoenix). "They have to be putting new designs, new technology and new products into their pipeline faster and faster with each generation. They don't have the luxury of doing as much detailed process development as what they could do five to 10 years ago. As a responsible supplier, it's up to us to help our customers move quickly and smoothly into each successive technology cycle."
To this end, Rodel recently completed construction of a state-of-the-art CMP applications laboratory in Phoenix. This multimillion-dollar Materials Integration Center is about 15,000 ft2, including 2000 ft2 of Class 10 cleanroom and 3000 ft2 of Class 1000 cleanroom.
The laboratory houses six polishing bays, featuring CMP polishers representing every type of polishing platform including rotary, orbital, linear and web. The metrology/clean area contains scrubbers and other equipment for wafer cleaning, a scanning electron microscope, and equipment to measure and inspect patterned wafer defects, wafer bow and warpage, dielectric film thickness, conductive film thickness and surface topography. The center's support areas consist of slurry preparation, deionized water generation, waste treatment, and an analytical lab for detailed pad and slurry characterization.
"What we're trying to do at Rodel is provide a credible starting point that customers can use to more quickly adapt our products into their process flow," Rhoades said. "If we can provide them a process starting point and some early characterization, it shortens the overall product development cycle time. That is of value to both us and the customer."
David Witko, director of worldwide demo operations for lithography equipment maker ASM Lithography (ASML, Tempe, Ariz.) added: "New customers will often come to us to help understand the integration between our equipment and their own process. They'll bring their own photoresist, their own wafers and test the alignment sequence or imaging capability. What this enables is a much more rapid ramp-up and integration once we start delivering to these new customers."
| 3. ASML's demo labs in Tempe, Ariz., and Veldhoven, Netherlands, house the company's most advanced lithography, processing and metrology equipment. (Source: ASM Lithography) |
Solving problems
Another major advantage of having the ability to mirror a customer's process is that suppliers can help figure out what's causing a problem, develop a solution to that problem and make sure the solution works before it's put into the production line.
"When we run into a problem at a customer's site, the customer typically wants us to have the ability to simulate that problem internally and work on finding a solution, rather than solely relying on their facility and using their resources to troubleshoot the problem," said van den Hoek of Novellus.
ASML's Witko added: "We try to replicate problems here that they may be seeing at a customer site. We can take the time here in the demo lab to do some investigation rather than have to remove a tool from production out in the field. By doing this we hope to minimize the amount of downtime for our customers. Oftentimes this will involve replicating a problem here relative to imaging or alignment and being able to test the fix here. The fix may be a software upgrade or new adjustment on the machine. Being able to thoroughly test the fix and document the fix before we attempt it at our customer site is probably one of the biggest benefits."
| 4. Semitool's new application lab in Kalispell, Mont., has a full complement of metal deposition tools, plus wafer cleaning and thermal processing capabilities. (Source: Semitool) |
Joint development
Another important advantage of having a sophisticated application lab is that it enables participation in a wider variety of joint R&D projects. "We can do experiments that cannot be easily executed in the customer's own facility, just from an equipment availability point of view. They'll come to us and utilize our resources to help them do that here," said ASML's Witko. "This extends to material suppliers and other equipment suppliers that we work closely with."
As an example, Witko said ASML recently worked with customers on a new alignment system that was going to be retrofitted onto some existing equipment. "In preparation for that, the customer came here and did quite extensive alignment target design evaluation so they could rebuild some of their production reticles with new alignment marks. They left with a very high confidence that once they implemented our new alignment system it would work well."
Novellus' van den Hoek said customers may want to evaluate different options using split-lot testing. "They may have two materials that they want to look at in combination with another material; for example, two different barrier seeds that they're interested in evaluating with our low-k," he said. "So we enable the customer to run split lots through our line, using not just the process technology provided by the Damascus Alliance, but also technology they may have developed or purchased from another supplier."
In-house development
Of course, suppliers also use the capabilities of their application labs to do their own development work. At Applied Materials' EPIC facility, for example, products are characterized for overall defect levels, operating cost, productivity and final electrical performance of completed test structures.
The key to success, according to ASML's Witko, is to not do overly invasive experimentation. "We don't install every little new 'gee-whiz' feature that everyone might want to experiment with in a very early stage of R&D. We keep the tools very production-ready. Because of that, our development organization is able to utilize these tools with very high confidence that they will function similarly to the tools that we have installed at our customers. We'll test things like software upgrades or hardware upgrades here before we start sending them out to the field."
Getting in
So how do you gain access to the advanced capabilities at today's equipment and materials suppliers? Most suppliers are organized so the application lab falls under the responsibilities of the sales group; so contact your local salesperson, and he or she should be able to set you up.
Suppliers report that their best customers know the most about the capabilities they have in their application labs, but many potential customers are unaware. "We've started just this fall doing customer seminars and really started getting the word out about our capabilities," said Jeff Butterbaugh, director of applications engineering for the surface conditioning division of FSI International (Chaska, Minn.).
Butcher of Semitool added: "When we bring them up here and show them the extent of our facility and the sophistication of our lab, they really are quite surprised, and we get some great results out of the lab."
Others may be aware of the capabilities of such application labs, but choose not to take advantage of them, mainly because of concerns over security. However, even those walls may be coming down.
"We've been successful in several cases at demonstrating through a professional approach and strict adherence to non-disclosure agreements that we are a viable partner, and they are not indeed going to compromise anything by working with us," said Rodel's Rhoades. "The importance of process-level knowledge and understanding is what enabled those breakthroughs."
Universally, customers or potential customers that do gain access to application labs do so free of charge, although the arrangements can get complex, as van den Hoek of Novellus explained: "The cost varies. It could be that we run our own 1000-wafer marathon, and we would absorb all of the costs. Or, if the customer has specific requirements, the customer could bring in wafers, and we would absorb the cost of running the tool — the operating cost in terms of gas, electricity, cleanroom, etc. — but the actual wafers would come from the customer. In the case of an integration demo, typically the most important question is who provides lithography. In some cases we provide lithography; in other cases the customer provides lithography. There is no money changing hands, but in some cases there is an exchange of services." •
