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Monitoring System for Plasma Etcher

Etchers remove material from unmasked areas of a wafer. It’s critical to stop the etching at just the right moment. This is done by measuring the composition of the gas in the chamber. Optimal etch recipes can be determined by examing graphs of the gas composition. I built an Excel-based monitoring system, using the SECS II protocol. As wafers were processed, a real-time graph was displayed and the data stored and uploaded to the factory host.  The system was used at Intel’s Fab 1 in Santa Clara.