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Semiconductor and MEMS Metrology

Surface metrology is essential for quality assurance on wafers made of various conductive or non-conductive materials such as silicon, sapphire, or glass with a typical diameter of 100, 150, 200 or 300 mm.

Meeting the Versatile Requirements of Silicon Foundries and Front-end Fabs
Semiconductor manufacturers have high demands on the production tolerances of pre-product wafers. Even small deviations can have a negative impact on quality in the downstream, cost-intensive process steps.

FormFactor’s high-quality, fully automated, multi-sensor FRT metrology technology helps wafer manufacturers control process tolerances and maintain their required quality standards.

Our FRT high-precision metrology tools measure and handle numerous wafer types up to 12 inches for both front and back end: bare, structured, coated, bonded, highly warped, thinned, TAIKO and fan-out wafers. Capabilities extend to wafers with Micro-Electronic-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) components, and wafer stacks at various 3D packaging process steps, as well as glass, lens, and non-SEMI-standard wafers, panels and film frames.

FormFactor FRT Metrology tools provide insight on Semiconductors:

TTV, Bow and Warp

 

  • Determination of TTV (wafer thickness variations), Bow, Warp and a variety of other parameters with measurement data, profile measurements and 3D measurement data provided.
  • Evaluation of sample thickness and bow measurement according to SEMI standard.
  • Determination of the parallelism of upper and lower topography measurement and the roll-off amount over the wafer edge.

    • Critical Dimension (CD) and Overlay

     

  • Determination of critical lateral structure sizes based on 3D measurement data or camera images.
  • Determination of overlay parameters such as offset (x,y) and rotation, obtaining results from two separate CD results (Hybrid Evaluation).

    • Saw Marks

  • Evaluation of the depth of saw marks based on profile measurements.

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    Wafer Stress

  • Determination of the stress of a wafer by measuring profiles (star-shaped through the center) before and after a coating process, mapping local stress with more than eight profiles.

    • MEMS

    Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology has become widely-used with a variety of applications. For example, smartphones can be equipped with wafer-level microphones, RF filters, CMOS image sensors or GPS and MEMS acceleration sensors. MEMS technology can also be found in health care applications, sensors in digital cameras, gyroscopes for stabilization or control. It offers more function in the same space and makes mobile applications possible with lower energy consumption.

     

    A number of measurement tasks are required due to the high product complexity of MEMS. Metrology is commonly used to determine roughness, contour, topography, and film thickness, as well as special tasks such as the measurement of membrane bow, stress measurement on coated wafers or the parallelism measurement of periodic structures.