Title of Invention

SYSTEM AND METHOD THAT CONSIDER TOOL INTERACTION EFFECTS FOR IDENTIFYING ROOT CAUSES OF YIELD LOSS

Technology

Yield enhancement is crucial for the companies’ profitability performance, especially during the development and mass production phases. So, the root causes of yield loss should be quickly identified in these stages for saving the production cost. However, when an interaction effect exists between a key device/variable and the other device/variable; also, the impact of this effect is greater than those impacts of the original devices/variables, the existing yield management methods may not correctly find out the root causes. To remedy this insufficiency, this patent develops the “Interaction-Effect Search Algorithm (IESA)”. The IESA scheme can not only identify the existence of an interaction effect but also determine the threshold of the key variable that cause this interaction effect.

Benefits

The existing yield management methods may not correctly discover the root causes of a yield loss with the existence of a significant interaction effect. To remedy this flaw, the IESA scheme is proposed in this patent. The results shown that the IESA scheme can indeed improve the existing yield management methods’s performance for identifying the interaction-effect key variable and determining the threshold value of the key variable that causes the interaction effect.

Possible Applications/ Industry Categories

TFT-LCD industry, semiconductor industry, LED industry, Solar energy industry.

Contact Information

Technology Transfer and Business Incubation Center, NCKU

Contact person：Claire Huang

E-mail：clairehu@mail.ncku.edu.tw