Automation Challenges for Semiconductor Equipment

For high-end manufacturing such as semiconductor equipment, whether it is front-end equipment around wafer manufacturing or back-end equipment such as material equipment and packaging and testing, the precision and reliability of the process are the top priorities.

Therefore, the semiconductor industry has a wide range of requirements for high-precision (including repeated positioning accuracy) and high-reliability automation control technology. For example, in MOCVD (Metal Organic Compound Chemical Vapor Deposition) reactors, the temperature and pressure of the gas in the reactor chamber and the time/temperature distribution of the substrate need to be precisely controlled so that ultrapure semiconductor materials can be well deposited on the substrate A thin metal film is formed on the surface, and then a blank wafer is made.

Secondly, some high-speed moving semiconductor equipment, such as lithography machines, wafer cutting machines, placement machines, etc., require high enough data transmission speed and processing capacity to support. For example, precise laser positioning of lithography machines requires high sampling rates, short cycle times (~50 µs), and stable real-time capabilities.

Third, cost and flexibility. For the millions of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, the modular control system design can not only realize the multi-function and flexibility of the equipment, but also further help customers to control the cost by saving space and reducing wiring.

How to improve the pain points of equipment automation?

Innovative automation solutions have been successively applied to oxidation/diffusion equipment, lithography equipment, etching equipment, cleaning equipment, ion implantation equipment, thin film deposition equipment, mechanical polishing equipment, and subsequent testing and packaging equipment, effectively improving domestic Some automation pain points of semiconductor equipment, such as:

Semiconductor equipment needs to be connected to external equipment such as various instruments and valves. The bus type is more complicated and requires a lot of communication programming work;

Semiconductor equipment manufacturers need to develop their own customized hardware products such as circuit boards, and the electrical development workload is large;

Semiconductor equipment manufacturers need high-speed bus communication to connect various components, and realize the transmission of large data volume communication parameters.