AVS 45th International Symposium
    Manufacturing Science and Technology Group Wednesday Sessions
       Session MS-WeM

Paper MS-WeM9
Integrating Process Models and Operational Methods

Wednesday, November 4, 1998, 11:00 am, Room 317

Session: Advanced Process Equipment and ES&H
Presenter: J.W. Herrmann, University of Maryland
Authors: J.W. Herrmann, University of Maryland
N. Chandrasekaran, University of Maryland
R.Z. Shi, University of Maryland
B.F. Conaghan, University of Maryland
G.W. Rubloff, University of Maryland
Correspondent: Click to Email
Though substantial attention is currently paid to unit process modeling/optimization and to operations/scheduling at the sector and fab levels, the relation between them has seen little exploration. This work attempts to bridge the gap between manufacturing process models and operational methods in order to systematically examine the consequences of these interactions: e.g., how the evolution of process technology will affect production, alter equipment design preferences, or suggest changes in scheduling strategies; or, what benefit to sector or factory metrics might be achieved if process or equipment improvements could be realized. The sensitivity analysis and optimization techniques in this work incorporate response surface models, which describe the manufacturing processes, and simulation and scheduling techniques, which evaluate the manufacturing system. Current work, described here, focuses on the fabrication of the tungsten plug, involving contact clean, Ti/TiN liner, and W CVD process steps carried out in a cluster tool. Response surface models for these steps are integrated in operations simulations for different cluster tool architectures (e.g., Novellus Concept II and Applied Centura) to evaluate the consequences of process-operations interactions. For each cluster tool, we describe how throughput and cycle time change as the process parameters and equipment design parameters vary. Thus, each tool's operational sensitivity is measured, which enables prediction of the impact of process changes.