A color vision inspection system for integrated circuit manufacturing

• Published in: IEEE transactions on semiconductor manufacturing Vol. 5; no. 4; pp. 290 - 301
• Main Authors: Barth, M., Hirayama, D., Beni, G., Hackwood, S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.11.1992; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Circuit testing; Design automation; Design. Technologies. Operation analysis. Testing; Electronics; Exact sciences and technology; Inspection; Integrated circuit manufacture; Integrated circuit reliability; Integrated circuit testing; Integrated circuits; Machine vision; Manufacturing processes; Pixel; Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices; Very large scale integration; Computer vision; Computer aided manufacturing; Methodology; Process control; Integrated circuit; Inspection; Hardware; Measurement method; Colour vision; Thin film; Defect detection
• ISSN: 0894-6507; 1558-2345
• DOI: 10.1109/66.175361

An inspection system is introduced that can measure critical film thicknesses, segment IC images, and detect an entire class of color defects that would be difficult or impossible to detect with typical gray-scale imaging. This inspection is carried out on a unique multiwindow parallel hardware architecture which allows the inspection process to be performed at high speeds. The inspection is based on image understanding techniques and is carried out in a two-stage fashion where defects are first rapidly hypothesized and then verified in detail only within the salient regions of an image, thus eliminating a large amount of irrelevant data. The system has been tested on numerous IC images and shows promising results.< >