Manufacturing path

Fab Equipment & Yield

A free 10-lesson path through the fab floor: cleanrooms and equipment bays, deposition and thermal/implant/wet tools, litho/etch/CMP as factory equipment, statistical process control, metrology and defect inspection, the Poisson yield model, failure analysis, design for manufacturing, and fab economics and careers.

10
lessons
Beginner to Intermediate
level
Free
every lesson
Start with lesson 1 →

Fab Equipment & Yield

  1. 1Inside a Wafer FabCleanroom classes and why they matter, how tools are grouped by function, and the lot, route and cycle-time vocabulary that describes how wafers actually move through a fab.
  2. 2Deposition ToolsCVD, PECVD, ALD and PVD as the main deposition techniques a fab uses, how they differ in step coverage and deposition temperature, and when epitaxy is used instead of a blanket film.
  3. 3Thermal, Implant and Wet ToolsFurnace and RTP anneal equipment, how an ion implanter actually accelerates and selects dopant ions, and the wet bench and clean equipment that round out a fab's core toolset.
  4. 4Litho, Etch and CMP as EquipmentThe scanner, track, etch chamber and CMP tool as pieces of factory equipment, and the throughput, uptime and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) metrics that determine how much a fab actually gets out of each one.
  5. 5Process Control and SPCControl charts and the Western Electric rules for flagging an out-of-control process, Cp and Cpk as capability indices, and run-to-run and fault detection and classification (FDC) as automated control layers.
  6. 6Metrology and Defect InspectionBrightfield and darkfield optical inspection, e-beam inspection and review, and how a detected defect is classified, as the measurement backbone that feeds both process control and yield learning.
  7. 7Yield FundamentalsThe Poisson yield model Y = e^(-A*D0), why Murphy and negative-binomial models fit real data better, and a worked example comparing yield predictions for two defect densities at a fixed die area.
  8. 8Yield Learning and Failure AnalysisReading wafer and bin maps for spatial failure signatures, and the SEM, FIB and TEM techniques failure analysis uses to physically trace a bin failure back to its root cause on the wafer.
  9. 9Design for Manufacturing and YieldCritical area as the yield-aware way to think about spacing, redundant vias, litho-friendly layout practices, and how DFM rules in the PDK connect yield models back to decisions physical design actually makes.
  10. 10Fab Economics and CareersThe dies-per-wafer and cost-per-good-die formulas that tie yield directly to business outcomes, what drives wafer cost, and the main roles available in fab and OSAT manufacturing in India.