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Background:In a fast-growing wafer fab environment with multiple technologies in development and production, enabling capabilities to investigate new metrology or process control solutions in production condition is key. One type of data is of interest to us: the images. To better exploit images, and for now CDSEM (Critical Dimension Scanning Election Microscope) images, an image processing sandbox environment has been put in place to enable a real time image process in a “shadow” mode with respect to production. This sandbox is used to validate solutions and propose them for full integration. Aim: Images are produced in large amounts in a wafer fab. They contain a lot of relevant information that can be extracted thanks to diverse types of software, either internally developed or from external suppliers. Simple demonstration of capabilities is often not enough to evidence the return on investment of a solution. The image lab sandbox is an infrastructure able to compute real time the images generated during production and send the results in a database environment which is connected to our data analytic environment. By doing so engineers can generate trends which are emulating control charts. Approach: The sandbox construction has been presented at SPIE 2022 [1] and more details and results are being proposed for publication in JM3 journal. Figure1 describe the main components are image backup infrastructure, ETL (Extract Transform Load) scripts to send image meta data to a database, scripts (trigger and daemon) that are used to launch “on demand” the usage of chosen software based on the image context, a data base system gathering fab measurement meta data and measurement results from software solution being tested, and a data analytic platform which is used to join data from the sand box to the global fab data system and provide data visualization solution. Results: The sandbox is today mainly used to support the deployment of contour-based metrology solutions but is aimed to interface with any other software solution. In 2022, the sandbox has processed more than 30 million images for diverse kinds of purposes. Currently three different software are running all dedicated to CDSEM images. CDSEM image quality monitoring, various contour-based metrology recipes, and more advanced testing like in device overlay or hotspot monitoring shown in this paper. Conclusion: The image Sandbox is now running as a laboratory to evaluate solutions and validate them for production integration. Applications are either for manufacturing control, tool qualification, R&D. Use cases are today multiple and some of them will be presented in this paper.
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