System and method for inspecting a wafer

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and a system for inspecting a wafer. The system comprises an optical detection head, a wafer operation table, a wafer stack, a XY operation table and a vibration separator. The optical detection head comprises some lighters, an image collector, an objective lens and other optical componets. The system and the method can collect bright field image, dark field image, 3D image and redetection image. The collected image is converted to an image signal and is transmitted to a programmable controller for processing. The detection is performed in the wafer moving process. The collected image is compared with a reference picture for finding the defect on the wafer. The invention provides a process method used for generating an optimized reference image and an optimized process method for detecting the picture. The generation process of the reference picture is performed automatically.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to a wafer detection process. In particular, the invention relates to an automated system and method for inspecting semiconductor components Background technique [0002] Ensuring that semiconductor components, such as semiconductor wafers and chips, are produced at a consistently high quality is increasingly important in the semiconductor industry. Semiconductor wafer fabrication techniques are constantly improving to incorporate an ever increasing number of features on smaller surface areas of semiconductor wafers. Correspondingly, lithographic processes employed in semiconductor wafer fabrication have become more sophisticated to enable the incorporation of increasing numbers of features on smaller surface areas of semiconductor wafers (ie, higher performance of semiconductor wafers). Therefore, the size of latent defects on semiconductor wafers is generally in the micron to sub-micron range. [0003] It is apparent that man...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, due to the current lack of technical knowledge and available know-how, memory-based semiconductor wafer inspection systems cannot use both brightfield and darkfield imaging to inspect wafers as they move, while also allowing design and configuration flexibility

Images