Sandia is applying its risk-management experience in helping the manufacturers of integrated circuits to extend the life and enhance the reliability of their equipment and their products. We are working through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the semiconductor consortium SEMATECH. The manufacturers we work with are the approximately 150 consortium members who manufacture chemical vapor deposition reactors, photolithography equipment, etchers, and other integrated-circuit manufacturing equipment. The Sandia group in this activity is the Semiconductor Equipment Technology Center.
The primary focus of this program is to provide support to the U.S. semiconductor industry to obtain world leadership in semiconductor manufacturing. Reliability of the manufactured parts and of the equipment that produces them is a prerequisite for obtaining such leadership.
As part of this program, Sandia has worked in four areas:
Reliability modeling and risk analysis of integrated-circuit manufacturing equipment. To perform this task we developed a software package that, running on desktop computers, calculates reliability of these systems. It also calculates mean time between failures and availability for repairable systems. With this package, called RAMP, we can compute sensitivity coefficients, identify system modifications to improve reliability, evaluate the importance of uncertainty in the analysis, and determine life-cycle costs. RAMP has been distributed to more than 200 users in about 60 companies.
Life testing. This testing used Sandia's test facilities and Sandia's expertise in experiment design.
Software and human factors engineering and reliability. Sandia's software expertise has been applied to improve the reliability of control software for semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Our human-factors experience has proven valuable in improving the user interface and maintenance ergonomics of semiconductor equipment.
Reliability guidelines. This task produced a road map for improving the reliability of semiconductor manufacturing equipment throughout the equipment's life cycle.
Future Work
Sandia continues to support semiconductor equipment manufacturers in reliability methods and particularly in equipment-reliability modeling. Future work will include the following activities:
Further integration of equipment reliability analysis methods with software reliability and ergonomics.
Enhancements of the RAMP software package.
Methods for minimizing cost to meet a reliability objective.
Training in methods for equipment-reliability analysis.
For further information, contact:
Jim Campbell
Sandia National Laboratories, MS-0746
Albuquerque, NM 87185-0746
Phone: (505) 844-5644
e-mail: jecampb@sandia.gov
Submitted October 1995 Layout design by Wanda Mar.
Submitted October 1995