(MENAFNEditorial) Process Engineering may sound like rocket science. In a way it actually is. Photolithography is a semiconductor manufacturing process which uses UV light to transfer micro patterns from a mask to the silicon substrate using multi million dollars' worth of equipment's. These patterns can be in nanometres scale. That's smaller than a diameter of human hair.
This process is the backbone of the semiconductor wafer fabrication. It defines the complex structures which would eventually be transferred on the silicon substrate. The substrate goes through multiple rounds of patterning, with each step defining a specific geometry. A key question that comes right off is 'What goes through the mind of a process engineer during process setup?
We spoke to one of the most renowned Engineer globally, Dinesh Kumar from Singapore to understand more about this amazing process and the keys to success. Dinesh Kumar has 17 years of experience in Photolithography, having worked with tier one semiconductor manufacturing plants and also with exciting new start-ups.
'The processes which I develop are designed with robustness in mind. 3 specific end goals. Wide Margins, Low Cost per mask layers and Flexibility. Machines tend to drift within a certain tolerance and the process should have a large enough margin to cater for this variation. The semiconductor manufacturing industry is always driven by cost. It often simpler to design the process with cost equivalent to best in class numbers right from the start. Many engineers tend to optimize based on immediate critical dimension specifications and tend to focus on cost only when there is a need to. Often times, rash changes to improve cost at the later stage may cause complex problems. Flexibility is another important key word in this arena. The process should be flexible enough to cater for unexpected machine downtime, bottlenecks or other manufacturing deviations says Dinesh Kumar.
He adds 'A change in mind set has to be adopted when qualifying any new devices. As an example, you cannot build a process scheme for MEMS based on the know-how of CMOS products. Every product would have to be assessed based on its specific design requirements. '
Dinesh Kumar has enabled difficult technologies such as MEMS and new developments within CMOS. As a hands on expert, he has also been appointed as a consultant to help top wafer fabrication plants improve photolithography processes in cost, flexibility and process robustness. Find out more about Dinesh through his linked in profile
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