PHE(Process History Explorer)

Question

Hi all,

It is written in books that PHE can Identify Problem Components in Complex Process Histories.

Nonetheless, we aren’t easy to understand or explain the benefit and the usage of this feature

compared to other features, i.e. process screening.

Let me know your ideas and experience if you have

-benefit compared to 'process screening'

-statistical details and analysis algorithm

-application case etc

Thanks

There is one question and answer in community. Has anyone tried out process history explorer ? Is it useful ?

MikeD_Anderson · Answer

I don't know of a dataset for this.  It's pretty sensitive process data and the semicon's aren't likely to share any - even under NDA.  The developers had to simulate a fab to get a data set to play with while they were working on it.  An example that comes to mind would be small misalignments in the masks at the lithography step.  Individually, the could pass muster, but cumulatively they could cause yield losses.

you could reach out to Georgia (gzmorgan0) in the community.  Looks like she's writing a blog post about it: https://community.jmp.com/t5/Discussions/Has-anyone-tried-out-process-history-explorer-Is-it-useful/td-p/248186

She might be able to help you out with some other examples.

M

IkjuShin · Answer

large interaction vs small interaction.

Let me know if you have any practical application.

Thanks, Mike

MikeD_Anderson · Answer

Process screening is more for clear large interactions - things that can be easily modeled.   Process screening is Bootstrap Forest under the hood - so think of it in that way.

Process History Explorer was requested. by semiconductor company a few years back to handle the issue of small issues that add up - like a tool being slightly off-target in a process where a part goes through the tool several times.  Individually, the process runs may not be out of compliance. But, cumulatively, the effect will cause the part to eventually drift out of compliance.  Since you have to consider the route a part travels through a plant to get this kind of information, you'd need to enrich the data set quite a bit before you could do the analysis with other tools.

Hope that helps!