Statistical Machine Control: A Practical Approach to Total Productive Maintenance of Semiconductor Equipment

Frank LavaUart, Equipment and SMC Engineer Wafer Fab Operations. Ned Cooper, Manager of E,quipment Engineering and Maintenance - Wafer Fab Operations. Medtronic Micro-Re1 - 2343 W. 10th Place Tempe, Arizona 85281 fiank.lavallart@medtronic.corri or (602) 929 54 13, ned.cooper@medtronic.com or (602) 92 1 6489 time making process control charts more difficult to interpret. Micro-Re1 had spent a lot of time on SPC training throughout the factory, and that included the Equipment Maintenance Technicians, but the techniques were not being utilized in maintenance to anywhere near the levels that management felt were warranted. It became more and more apparent that it was necessary to begin a program to emphasize the importance of minimizing variation on the important equipment parameters that affect the process. This would allow process engineering to spend more time on the materials, time, temperature, etc. aspects of the process, having confidence that we (Equipment Engineering and Maintenance) had adequate controls on the equipment to minimize variation. This seemed like a noble effort and we recognized that this effort would be a long difficult task, but even then, we underestimated the effort required. In the first place, it is difficult to take a group of individuals Background: Several years ago, it became evident to whose primary training is to fix problem and tell management that the Statistical Process Control them that is not their primary job at all. Our l l encompassing by organization, like many others, have been able to get effort at Micro-Rel, while a accepted definition, was not providing a deep over that hurdle with the efforts that go into a Total enough focus to minimize potenfial sources of Productive Maintenance program where Preventive variation within the equipment. The process control Maintenance (PM) and Predictive Maintenance charts usually included the equipment variation, but program have been put into place. The PM and that variation was not in a derivative form that could Predictive Maintenance programs still fit fairly well be looked at separately fiom the process variation. into the accepted maintenance activities and In other words, the variation often included both the practices. The steps toward a Statistical Machine process and equipment related variations. Micro-Re1 Control have been much more difficult to introduce management felt that the Equipment Engineering as main stream maintenance. We found a lot of and Maintenance group could do a lot more to listening occurred but it was tough to get the reduce variation within the equipment itself. This Rubber to the Road as this process was outside of effort was even more important in a custom oriented the normal comfort zone of a Maintenance fab such as Micro-Rels fab where the processes are Technician. We began to realize that it would take changed several times a day. This makes equipment the dedication and concentrated efforts of a fidl time variation control an even more important element SMC/ equipment engineer to train, coach and since equipment does not run a single process all the mentor the program to make the conversion fiom
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Abstract Statistical Machine Control (SMC) encompasses the total maintenance effect on equipment. This approach steps far beyond the fix it attitude that has often been the understood job of a maintenance technician. SMC incorporates Total Quality Management (TQM) practices, the predictive and preventive maintenance programs. The goal of the program is to d e uptime while continuing to reduce variation. Variation has an effect on product yields, and equipment can be a major cause of the total variation in a factory. SMC addresses these concerns, and it requires a change in mind set that takes time, training and a lot of ene:rgy to bring to fruition. SMC works if the organization is committed to overcome the stumbling blocks along the way. This paper is illustrated with four practical examples.

1997 IEEWCPMT Intl Electronics ManufacturingTechnology Symposium

fix it technician to SMC Technician. We presented rogram to our director and the position was eventually open for that job. We then hired a an individual to get the process started and the project was underway. After a couple of years, with the competitive environment in Phoenix, we lost the original engineer to another company and he was replaced by Frank Lavallart. This turn out to be an excellent choice and Frank has taken the program to the next level as we continue to improve the SMC program.

Maintenance department deploys all the traditional TQM tools known to circumvent the reoccmence of the problem: pure problem solving techniques, and statistical tools. The particular application of statistical tools to address issues influenced or caused by equipment is what we call Statistical Machine Control.
Maintenance as a customer: Successfbl implementation of any Continuous Improvement effort on a piece of semi-conductor manufacturing equipment requires the knowledge of the equipment vendor. From the start of any project, we inform the vendor about the intent and the scope of our SMC activities. For most vendors, we establish partnership meetings where we gain more knowledge on the equipment, and offer in return the actual data on the equipment performance. The mutual benefits generated by SMC allows the technician(s) to accurately monitor the equipment.

a~ntenance serving its customers: C activities form a practical response to a approach in an equipment maintenance A Maintenance department is nt. dedicated to the needs of the Production and Engineering departments. Whenever equipment is being repaired, maintained, upgraded, etc., the technician delivering the service must satisfl the needs of the people manufacturing products or implementing processes (the customers9). Based on these premises, Micro-Re1 requested The goal of SMC: that any Continuous Improvement of the The goal of our Statistical Machine Control maintenance h c t i o n start with a short survey of the program at Micro-Re1 is to reduce variation on the customer needs. Each piece of equipment process output, and maximize uptime. selected for an SMC project was initially the object Any equipment parameter that has a significant of a rapid collection of information with the influence on the process output and that cannot be duction and Engineering users of the equipment. controlled by the process recipe, must be under have interviewed the process engineer(s), control. For instance, if a process c h b e r exhaust operators, and maintenance technicians who have flow impacts the heat dispensed on a wafer, the flow dealt with the equipment. must be controlled. A close-loop system regulating We discovered that in some instances the the flow may offer a satisfactory control of the problem raised by the interviewee was actually a variation. perceived issue on the equipment. Proper However, other parameters are not controlled as information fiom the person who has revealed the easily. For instance, Mass Flow Controllers get perceived issue is quite often enough to alleviate the whole problem. We trained the technicians not to flow f ...Process amomdates underestimate those issues, as they may generate for degraded performance. fkustration without actual cause. However, most issues have a real foundation. In I ( \ time the event that the equipment does not influence the issue, the information is forwarded to the process engineer. In many of those cases, traditional Statistical Process Control will allow the engineer to MFC perf. degrades... monitor and put the issue under control. Whenever the equipment is involved in the issue contaminated by process gases that flow through. raised by Production or Engineering, the When significant contamination has occurred, one

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type of response consists of accommodating for the degraded performance of the MFC by modifjing the recipe. Eventually, Maintenance intervenes or the MFC fails and gets overhauled. The process all of a
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Also, at any given time, one piece of equipment, or one type of equipment in a wafer fab constitutes bottleneck of the fab. If the productive time of that specific piece of equipment can be augmented by 1%, the whole fab capacity goes up by 1% I . There are obvious benefits to knowing the level of performance of the critical equipment.
A generic SMC project: To provide some guidance to the technicians starting an SMC project, we have defined the major milestones of a project. *Collect the existing data and issues about the selected piece of equipment. *Define and prioritize among the issues (e.g. Pareto chart); identi@the largest source of variation. *Meet with all the concerned parties (operators, process engineers, vendors, maintenance technician). Implement the Action Item List *Repeat the previous two steps until significant improvement is recorded. *Act to limit variation and to avoid reoccurrence of the issue by utilizing SMC charts. Document the whole SMC process. Celebrate. We feel that any project needs to follow these steps, to insure quality and to allow other technicians to join the effort. Example #1: uniformity variation delivered by a Rapid Thermal Annealer. The Rapid Thermal Processing (RTP) consists of growing a thin oxide layer on the wafer by exposing the wafer to a controlled and short duration heating cycle.

time

sudden gets out-of-control, without apparent reason. A carefid study of the impact of the MFC on the process allows the maintenance technician to perform calibration exactly when it is needed. The recipe is never modified to accommodate any equipment parameter, and ultimately variation of the process is reduced. Maximizing uptime is another goal of the SMC program, Tracking of equipment performance must be established. It is measured with the number of Mures, the amount of time wiih the working equipment, the Mean Time Between Failure, the Mean Time To Repair, etc. Doing so encowages the technician to act upon declining trends. A posting of those metrics allows the maintenance department to concentrate on the equipment that
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demands the most help. Moreover, the charts monitoriug equipment performance constitute a factual and efficient way for discussions with the equipment vendor. Time spent with the vendor can be dedicated to the research of a solution.

n this example was The RTP equipment used i AG Associates Heatpulse model 2146, installed in 1989. This equipment contains dual bank,parallel
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lamps in contrast to currently available cross-lamp models which have much higher within wafer uniformity specifications. The equipment manufacturer AG Associates was involved fiom the beginning of the SMC effort. A rapid survey of the users, Production and Process Engineering, and the vendor showed that uniformity of the oxide grown is the main issue. Oxide thickness variation occurs across the surface of a wafer, fiom wafer to wafer within a lot, and fiom lot to lot. It appeared that the largest variation occurred across the wafer surface. Thickness was varying by 12% or more until March 1996 (well beyond the equipment capability). To bring the whole team together, the variation addressed in this project was defined as The 700 degrees Celsius, 1.5 microns silicide recipe does not generate sheet rho below 4 ohms per square at 3 standard deviation. A cause and effect diagram was built, and summarized the fact that the effect is caused by factors falling into six categories: Machine (i.e. the Rapid Thermal Annealer), Method (process or recipe), Material (the wafer itself), Measurement (the tools used to track the process outcome), Environment (facilities parameters), and People (operators can have an effect on the

.Condition of the processing quartz chamber (cleanliness, scratches, optical characteristics such as haziness, etc.). a Wafer location in the chamber during processing. Gas flow rates. Wafer supporting tray. Processing chamber water cooling. Thermocouple calibration wafer. * Calibration method. Eventually, guidance ftom the equipment manufacturer and a careful examination of the process outcome, i.e. the oxide thickness control chart, demonstrate that the pyrometer cooling water, as well as the lamps age and placement have the largest influence. The temperature of the
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pyrometer cooling water was controlled within 1 degree Celsius of the nomina1 temperature until it was found to have a large influence on the measurement r\ delivered by the pyrometer. The water was then controlled within 0.1 degree of the nominal temperature. Moreover, additional h e tuning of the heat generation lamps was performed by AG Associates. As result, the variation in oxide thickness a wafer was further 3.5% to less than 2.5%. / As the temperature of the water is Em?a m!!s staying very stable over a long period of process). Group Nominal Techniques (under the t h e , installing limits with ab was found form of a vote) allowed the team to Prioritize the practical than a control ofthe temperature. alleged cause of the largest variation in oxide thickness The parameters suspected to have the largest influence are: 0 Age and placement of heat generation lamps.
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Lamps are now replaced and tuned for p"m~makeLEYBOLD Inspected by consistent heat delivery on a yearly basis (until ;g;zdel DBOA Date PROMiS CZ then, lamps were very seldom modified). As the performance of each lamp degrades p " ~ w m ' ~ Actual AciccedJ De r mon dimension / Repla inconsistently over time, the process rankma Rem uniformity degrades accordingly, but in a known and controlled manner. The remaining parameters appeared well in control. In some cases, they have insignificant or no influence on the process outcome. This allows the maintenance department to abandon unnecessary maintenance and cost. Example #2: cost-effective overhaul of vacuum pumps. Vacuum pumps used to evacuate processing chambers are subject to the normal wear due to their technological limitation, as well as the contamination and corrosion caused by process gases. As a consequence, regular overhaul are necessary, to replace the worn or corroded parts, and remove any trace of con1ta"nts. 32 I I Due to the extent of the work, overhauls are 3 3 5 1 34 1 5 1 I I disruptive, costly, and ck"l the :5 L&OhemM",C 0"en son,"%& maintenance of spares to replace a suddenly as new dim - current dim Current ranking = 5 x hiling pump. as new dim - overhaul dim Of Late OVerhads Of the Pumps increase the ifthe considered current dimension has not reached the overhaul, and augments considerably the risk of the overhaul dimension or if the dimension causing catastrophic failure. The cost of ownership of such the is not known, and pieces of equipment rise once the "overhaul threshold" has been passed.

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"overhaul threshold". From the beginning of this SMC project, causes of performance degradation were classified into the three categories: contamination, corrosion, and wear. Wear, corrosion, and contamination are tracked on a scale fiom 0 to 10, O'being as new condition, 5 overhaul threshold, and 10 condition causing failure of the whole pump. Whenever a pump is overhauled, each critical part is measured for wear, and inspected for contamination and corrosion. Data is entered in a spreadsheet. Raw dimensional data is entered, and a ranking is automatically computed as:
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1997 IEEWCPMT Int'l Electronics ManufacturingTechnology Symposium

if the considered current dimension has gone beyond the overhaul dimension and the failure dimension is known.

are the key instruments to measure the proper flow of gas. The PECVD equipment has a built-in procedure to self calibrate the MFC. The processing chamber Surface roughness is evaluated with a physical being evacuated is monitored by the equipment for surface roughness template, and a measurement in pressure versus time elapsed. microinches. Ranking is computed in the same volume is fixed and known, the flow of gas can be related to the pressure, and time. Eventually, a flow manner as the above mentioned dimensions. Corrosion and contamination are visually can be computed. The result of the measurement ought to be inspected, and ranked using a document with validated for Repeatability (Reproducibility is not an descriptions of typical conditions. A general ranking is then given to the pump, issue: automatic procedure without any operator defined as the maximum value among all the intervention). Concurrent calibration of the MFCs with a rankings. An empirical relation based on type of process, golden standard allows the maintenance technician model of pumps, and time elapsed determines the to evaluate the offset existing on the built-in method. Classic gage Repeatability and ranking, and the optimal time to overhaul. Reproducibility shows the accuracy of the measurement, and allows the technician to take xample #3: timely sc eduling of an etcher action only for relevant measurements. The results of this autocalibration procedure are Etcher equipment requires maintenance based on usage. Performing maintenance on an etcher entered into a Control Chart (X bar R chart). Subsequent interrupts production for several hours, as pumping Control limits are calculated. the chamber down to a high level of vacuum PECVD PROCESS GAS MFC AVERAGE requires several hours. Maintenance is scheduled by performing a linear regression on the last ten wafer count. A tentative date is computed, and gains accuracy as the task gets closer. i 246

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libration of Mass Flow equipment. Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) equipment processes wafers with the usage of gases. The delivery of the exact quantity of gas onto the wafer affects the thickness of the surface layer. The Mass Flow Controllers (MFC)

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calibration results are added to the chart. Traditional SPC rules are applied to decide when it is relevant to remove the MFC for overhaul and calibration.

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Status of the SMC program, as of June 1997 Early in the program, Preventive Maintenance was the focus to establish control of the equipment. Predictive maintenance then followed. Resolution of variation issues (such as example #1 above) with the use of classic TQM tools such as Pareto charts has been in place for two years and is now a mature process. The statistical tracking of equipment parameters is at an early stage, but is gaining momentum. We feel however that this key element in the SMC program will mature over the next 1 or 2 years as it spreads to all the key equipment.

References 1. Goldratt, Eliyahu M., The Goal : A Process of Ongoing Improvement, North River Press 2. The Memory Jogger, second ed., GoaVQPC (Methuen, MA, 1988), pp.70-71

Conclusions Statistical Machine Control at Micro-Re1 encompasses a wide variety of techniques all relying on the proactive analysis of equipment performance. As this program gains seniority and spreads in the organization, each key piece of equipment should eventually be monitored with a set of Control Charts, tracking the two or three most critical parameters influencing process outcome and uptime. This augmented vision of the equipment performance is the determining factor in improving equipment throughput and reducing semiconductor geometries. This is the future as we envision it at Micro-Rel. Efforts to use Statistical Machine Control to reduce variation in equipment will continue: to be expanded until all equipment is covered by the SMC process.

Acknowledgments We would like to recognize the work of Bob Hanson on the Rapid Thermal Processor, Karl Pifer on the vacuum pumps, Robert Scott on the etchers, and Chuck Hall on the MFC calibration. The hard work of those individuals, as; well as the collaboration of the rest of the maintenance team has rendered the implementation of the SMC program possible. We would like to thank AG Associates, Inc. for their valuable insight on Rapid Thermal Annealing equipment.

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