Onto Innovation
Canvas Category Machinery : Special Purpose : Semiconductor
Metrology, defect inspection, lithography, and smart manufacturing software solutions for semiconductor manufacturers to accelerate product and process development, increase yields and reduce costs to enable customers to be first-to-market with premium products at premium prices.
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Aftermarket Sensors Boost Yield In Wafer Fabs
Third-party sensors are being added into fab equipment to help boost yield and to extend the life of expensive tools, supplementing the sensors that come with equipment used in fabs.
Sensors for temperature, pressure, humidity, gas concentrations, vibration and current can be found throughout the process tools and associated sub-systems. Third-party sensors are often added after installation and initial process development. Those sensors also can be applied to sub-fab intake and outtake pipes to monitor parameters that illuminate issues affecting process variability and defectivity. In addition, equipment teams can use instrumented wafers as a source for equipment set-up, post maintenance qualification and for predictive maintenance algorithms.
The good news is that integrating 3rd-party sensor data into factory data management systems is straightforward, especially when sensors use established SEMI standards like SECS/GEM. Even if they don’t adhere to those standards, the barrier to connect them to a factory’s data infrastructure is low. But to maximize their usefulness, several industry experts emphasized the importance of traceability and the ability to correlate data from different sources in context.
Onto Innovation Announces “Tuck-In” Acquisition of Lumina Instruments, Inc. and Lithography Business of Kulicke and Soffa
Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE: ONTO), a global provider of process control and packaging lithography solutions to the semiconductor market, announced that it has acquired Lumina Instruments, Inc. based in Milpitas, California.
Opportunities for inspection of surface and subsurface defects and contamination continue to grow as applications in panel-level packaging transition to glass. Simultaneously, silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) wafer-based power markets continue to grow and so do the process control challenges in their manufacturing as wafer sizes migrate from 150mm to 200mm and 200mm to 300mm, respectively.
Onto Innovation also acquired the lithography business from Kulicke and Soffa Industries, Inc., gaining 24 patents issued, eight additional patents pending, and more than 200 man-years of semiconductor lithography and wafer applications experience. Equipped with a strong set of hardware and software technologies, differentiating patents, and unique designs for metrology and lithography performance, this team will accelerate and expand the JetStep® panel lithography roadmap.
Onto Innovation Debuts Sub-surface Defect Inspection for Advanced Packaging
Onto Innovation Inc. announced the release of a new sub-surface inspection capability for the Dragonfly® G3 sub-micron 2D/3D inspection and metrology platform. The new capability enables whole wafer inspection for critical yield impacting defects that can lead to lost die as well as entire wafers breaking in subsequent process steps. Such defects were previously impossible to find in a production environment. In today’s world of wafer thinning and multi-layer wafer or die bonding, sub-surface defects are far more dangerous than ever before as bonded layers are now a tenth of their former thickness and far more brittle and therefore more susceptible to damage pre- or post-bonding. Sub-surface defects that occur during the bonding or thinning process such as micro-cracks can cause not only die yield issues, but wafers can be shattered resulting in the loss of hundreds of die in an instant.
Onto Innovation’s 4Di InSpec™ Automated Metrology System Receives 2024 Innovative System of the Year Award from FANUC America
Onto Innovation Inc. and its Tucson subsidiary 4D Technology today announced they’ve been named winner of FANUC America’s prestigious 2024 Innovative System of the Year award for the 4Di InSpec automated metrology system (AMS). The system enables automated surface defect and feature metrology for aviation, aerospace and other applications in the industrial manufacturing market. The patented, vibration-immune technology enables the unique capability of using non-contact, three-dimensional optical metrology on the production floor, providing new levels of defect inspection with micrometer-level resolution. In partnership with OptiPro Systems, the 4Di InSpec AMS systems were delivered in the second half of 2023 to several leading aerospace engine manufacturers.
Fabs Drive Deeper Into Machine Learning
For the past couple decades, semiconductor manufacturers have relied on computer vision, which is one of the earliest applications of machine learning in semiconductor manufacturing. Referred to as Automated Optical Inspection (AOI), these systems use signal processing algorithms to identify macro and micro physical deformations.
Defect detection provides a feedback loop for fab processing steps. Wafer test results produce bin maps (good or bad die), which also can be analyzed as images. Their data granularity is significantly larger than the pixelated data from an optical inspection tool. Yet test results from wafer maps can match the splatters generated during lithography and scratches produced from handling that AOI systems can miss. Thus, wafer test maps give useful feedback to the fab.