KLA-Tencor Corporation supplies process control and yield management solutions for the semiconductor and related microelectronics industries. The company's portfolio of products, software, analysis, services and expertise is designed to help integrated circuit (IC) manufacturers manage yield throughout the entire fabrication process from research and development to final mass-production yield analysis.
The Company products and services are used by major wafer, IC and photomask manufacturer in the world. Its services include inline wafer defect monitoring; reticle and photomask defect inspection; critical dimension (CD) metrology; wafer overlay; film and surface measurement; and overall yield and fab-wide data analysis.
Products
The Company designs, markets, manufactures and sells its equipment—consisting of patterned and unpatterned wafer inspection, optical overlay metrology, electron-beam (e-beam) review, reticle and photomask inspection, spectroscopic, and film and surface measurement tools—as well as its yield analysis and defect classification software to provide fab-wide yield management solutions. These solutions are optimized for the manufacturing process cells used in IC production, including lithography, deposition, etch, and chemical mechanical planarization (CMP). Its offerings can be categorized into four groups: Defect Inspection; Metrology; Services; Software and Other.
Defect Inspection
The Company's defect inspection tools are used to detect, count, classify and characterize particles, pattern defects, surface anomalies and electrical failures during all stages of the IC manufacturing process. Its portfolio includes the tools that enable its customers to find new defect types during development and ramp, and monitor defect level by type during production.
High-Sensitivity Broadband Brightfield Inspection: The company’s 2800 Series full-spectrum brightfield inspection platform features a broadband light source spanning deep ultraviolet (DUV), UV and visible wavelengths, and a proprietary optical design that maximizes sensitivity at all throughput settings. This full-spectrum brightfield inspector has the ability to tune its wavelength to optimize defect capture on each layer. The 2800 Series delivers the high-sensitivity and production-worthy performance that chipmakers need to produce market-leading 65nm devices.
High-Performance Darkfield Inspection: The company’s Puma 9000 Series (Puma) is a darkfield inspection platform. Puma represents a marked departure from traditional darkfield tools, which are based on acousto-optical device (AOD) scanners and photo-multiplier tube (PMT) detectors—technologies that are reaching their limits. Puma replaces the AOD/PMT technology with its patented Streak imaging technology. Scalable for multiple technology generations, Streak combines advanced UV-laser illumination optics with a solid-state, multi-pixel linear sensor to image the scattered light. Puma can be configured to accommodate applications ranging from process tool monitoring through critical etch line monitoring, allowing its customers to cost-optimize their inspection strategies and achieve tighter production control.
Electron-Beam Inspection: In February 2006, the Company introduced the eS3x series of e-beam inspection systems—the eS32. A single system spanning development and production applications, the eS32 provides the sensitivity at throughput for defect.
Wafer and Film Surface Inspection: The Company’s Surfscan SP2 incorporates a new UV illumination technology to improve inspection sensitivity and speed on IC films, as well as both traditional silicon and engineered substrates. Surfscan SP2 is capable of detecting defects as small as 30nm.
Wafer Surface Inspection - The wafer substrate is the foundation of an integrated circuit. The Surfscan SP2 is being adopted by wafer manufacturers worldwide.
Unpatterned Surface Inspection - IC applications for the Surfscan SP1 and Surfscan SP2 inspectors include incoming wafer surface quality measurements, process tool qualification and monitoring. Viper 2435 is an automated 300mm wafer and tool dispositioning system that captures a range of defect types enabling inspection of wafer lots.
Reticle Inspection: Reticles are quartz plates that contain microscopic images of electronic circuits. Placed into steppers or scanners, these reticles are used to transfer circuit patterns onto wafers to fabricate ICs. The Company’s TeraScan, a high-resolution inspection system for XRET photomasks, provides a mask inspection solution for sub-90nm IC production. TeraScan, with the revolutionary STARlight system, offers high-sensitivity to detect classical defects (intrusions, extrusions and point defects) as small as 80nm, and CD defects as small as 50nm.
Transparent Film and Substrate Inspection: In 2005, the Company through its acquisition of Candela Instruments added the Candela series of Optical Surface Analyzers (OSA) to its portfolio. These systems detect and classify surface defects on optoelectronic and semiconductor wafers, including transparent wafers, such as sapphire and glass. By simultaneously measuring reflectivity and topographic variations on the surface, these systems enable detection of particles, stains, scratches, pits and bumps. Epi layers and film coatings can also be inspected for uniformity, particles, and surface defects.
Process Window Qualification: The Company’s Process Window Qualification (PWQ) solution enables device manufacturers to identify reticle design marginalities by examining the wafer for poorly printed features using their KLA-Tencor 23xx or 2800 broadband brightfield wafer inspection systems. PWQ enables lithographers to compare die resulting from marginal lithography parameters with die printed under optimized conditions, to identify and prioritize problematic regions as a function of process parameters.
Metrology
Optical Overlay Metrology: In 2005, the Company introduced Archer AIM+, a metrology solution, which is designed to address chipmakers’ lithography overlay control needs. In 2006, the Company introduced the K-T Analyzer lithography correctibles platform to accelerate and improve lithography cell qualification and control. K-T Analyzer is used to improve the focus/dose analysis applications at various logic and memory manufacturers worldwide.
CD Metrology
In February 2006, the Company introduced the SpectraCD-XT—its fourth-generation of inline optical CD metrology systems for patterning process control at the 90nm and 65nm nodes. SpectraCD-XT is a non-destructive dedicated CD and profile metrology system. The tool is the high performance spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE)-based system with sub-2-second move-acquire-measure (MAM) time.
Film Measurement: The Company’s film measurement products measure various optical and electrical properties of thin films. These products are used to control a range of wafer fabrication steps. Its SpectraFx 200 enables IC manufacturers to achieve production control over their advanced film processes at the 65nm node and below. Based on the Company’s SE technology, SpectraFx 200 utilizes a Dielectric Pattern Metrology (DPM) capability to provide measurements of in-die process variation on product wafers non-destructively.
Contamination Monitoring: The Company’s Quantox product line provides non-contact, inline electrical performance measurements of key parameters that determine the quality of gate dielectric films, including contamination and oxide thickness, as well as electrical capacitance and leakage. Its Quantox XP system provides information on both the physical and electrical properties of gate dielectric materials, as well as correlation to device electrical test data, enabling chipmakers to predict transistor performance inline.
Surface Metrology: The Company’s stylus profilers measure the surface topography of films and etched surfaces, and are used in basic research and development as well as semiconductor production and quality control. Its HRP high resolution profilers, the HRP-340, combine the dishing and erosion measurement capabilities of its long-scan profilers with high-aspect-ratio etched feature measurement capability. The P-16 advanced surface profiler is a benchtop contact stylus profiler designed for automated step height, surface contour, and roughness measurements, and provides 2D and 3D analysis of topography for various surfaces and materials. The Company also provides stress measurement systems and capabilities, such as its new wafer bow and wafer stress option for its ASET-F5x and SpectraFx 100 thin-film metrology tools.
Services
The company’s service enables customers to maximize the performance and productivity of their assets over the entire tool life cycle. The company’s Technology Engagement Services (TES) collaborates with customers to use recipes to improve baseline performance.
Software and Other
The Company’s productivity and analysis solutions translate raw inspection and metrology data into patterns that reveal process problems. The Company manufactures, sells, and services yield management solutions to the data storage market, with offerings for hard disk drive and component makers.
Yield Management & Analysis Solutions
The company’s Klarity Defect is an automated inline defect analysis module and defect data management system designed to help fabs achieve faster yield learning cycles. By identifying excursions in real time, Klarity Defect enables fabs to embed expert decision-making processes within analysis recipes. These processes are automatically triggered when user-specified events occur.
The company’s Klarity ACE yield analysis solution enables fast integration, correlation and analysis of yield- and process-related data to accurately determine the source of defects and process excursions. It can differentiate between random and systematic yield problems, providing users with the data they need in order to take appropriate corrective measures.
Klarity SSA (Spatial Signature Analysis) provides automated classification and root cause analysis of spatial signatures, which are defect clusters and patterns that can be indicative of an out-of-spec process or process tool problem. Klarity SSA can be utilized for various applications where enhanced excursion detection is needed, including process line and tool monitoring, as well as engineering analysis, across key process modules.
The company’s ProDATA lithography data analysis tool, along with its PROLITH lithography and etch optimization tool, helps manufacturers reduce their advanced lithography development time and cost, as well as optimize their design-for-manufacturing (DFM) efforts.
The company’s IMPACT XP automated defect classification (ADC) solution provides consistent and accurate classification of yield-limiting defects to help its customers accelerate their ramp to higher process yields. IMPACT XP incorporates its SmartGallery tool, which reduces the setup time associated with ADC implementation in fabs. This is a critical requirement, particularly for foundries and application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) manufacturers, who specialize in short runs of multiple products. Its Real Time Classification (RTC) and iADC technologies, which provide classification and binning of defect types in real time during inspection, are critical features on all of its e-beam and optical inspection tools.
Computational Lithography: The Company’s DesignScan computational lithography solution enables device manufacturers to identify marginal features in the post-OPC mask design data by performing a physics-based simulation of the lithography process (and its variability) followed by an inspection of the results by comparing back to the original layout of the design. The simulation and inspection is performed on the Company’s high speed image computing platform which allows for full chip inspections.
Data Storage Industry: In the front-end of thin film head wafer manufacturing, the company provides the same process control equipment with which it serves the semiconductor industry. In the back-end of head manufacturing, the Company provides a range of test equipment, including fly-height and head resonance testers, such as the D6, high-resolution surface profilers, and the MRW3 quasi-static tester. In substrate and media manufacturing, the Company provides metrology and defect inspection solutions with its Candela 6120 system with optical surface analysis technology.
Sales Offices
The company’s sales and service offices are located in the United States, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United Kingdom.
Competition
The Company faces competition from Applied Materials, Inc. and Hitachi Electronics Engineering Co., Ltd.
History
KLA-Tencor Corporation was founded in 1975.
