Advanced IC manufacturing requires continual advances in the precision of unit processes. We are studying the application of in situ sensing to semiconductor processes. In situ sensing may make it possible to implement advanced real-time control schemes and is also important for process monitoring and fault detection. This work is in collaboration with Prof. Bruce Krogh of the ECE department.
In research performed by X. Cheng and T. Knight, a quadrupole mass spectrometer was integrated with a PECVD deposition system. Real-time control was implemented using both linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) and model predictive control (MPC). Publications are listed here. This work benefited from the donation of equipment by MKS Instruments.
We have also explored the use of a quadrupole mass spectrometer for diagnositics on the UHV/CVD deposition system.