Research
Control in Semiconductor Manufacturing/Processing |
| Posted by Administrator (admin) on Dec 12 2007 at 8:15 PM |
| Research >> Control in Manufacturing |
Faculty: D. Subbaram Naidu
Past Graduate Students: Martin Murillo, Hardev Singh
Project Description:
In order for the U.S. semiconductor industry to retain and improve its
competitiveness in the international market place, it is critical that
its factories produce highly advanced products at a very low costs. To
achieve these goals, these factories must be equipped with processing
systems which can perform their functions with very high accuracy and
throughput but with low costs. At the present time, most semiconductor
manufacturing equipment is designed to be operated in an open-loop
mode. Due to this in-run open-loop operation, their manufacturability
properties are not as good as desired. Reactive ion etching is a
critical technology for modern VLSI circuit fabrication at many steps
of the manufacturing process. The National Research Council report on
plasma processing materials cites the lack of feedback control as one
of the main problems facing the semiconductor manufacturing industry in
general. The research issues are using modern control techniques for
improving the efficiency of the processing and fabrication equipment.