Technical Solutions From LBL Scientific
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Static Audit of your Facility

. Find out if your facility has static charge in locations that can be harmful to your manufacturing process.  Static charge can dramatically increase micro contamination by ESA (electrostatic attraction).  It also drives damage from ESD (electrostatic discharge).  These diuscharges create EMI which can interfere with the smooth operation of robotics. The work includes bench marking of each step of the production line, measuring electric fields and electromagnetic interference caused by electrostatic discharge.  A report is supplied with interpretation of results and assessment of the magnitude of each item found.

While most commonly people think in terms of physical damage or microcontamination, this service can also include a search for ESD induced transient EMI.  This can be important in facilities with lots of computer driven robotics or automated testing.  This type of EMI can disturb microprocessor operations resulting in locked up  or stopped robots, other robotic unexplained behavior or cause good parts to test bad.In addition to unexplained halts, robots can move to the wrong location or bang products into walls.

Another handling issue has to do with electrostatic forces and it is called stiction. Wafers with electrostatic charge can attract each other and commonly, when one wafer is removed from a cassette, it wilt bring its neighbors along. Ultimately, this leads to wafer damage.

Electrostatic attraction also causes wafers to bang against each other. This is both a physical damage and a micro contamination issue. Click on the following movie to watch a wafer bang event. Watch the wafer closely as it enters the cassette. The adjacent 


vertical furnace tap from Lawrence B Levit on Vimeo.

wafer bangs against it. LBL scientific has used a wide band oscilloscope (>1 GHz) and custom antennas  to identify this phenomenon in a variety of tools.. Once the effect is identified, it is straightforward to eliminate it with an air ionizer or a change in cassette or grounding or cassette nest or FOUP contacts.. I have found this wafer banging in several different process  tools.

Contact LBL Scientific to Discuss your Needs

 
LBL Scientific   |      1865 Monte Sereno Dr.  Alamo CA 94507 USA  |      | email

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