Answering the needs of semiconductors (continued)
A continuation of our interview with Alex Oscilowski, COO, Rudolph Technologies, which appeared in the June 2007 Viewpoint column.
Larry Maloney, Contributing Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 5/31/2007 12:46:00 PM
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Q: Where must Rudolph put its R&D focus to meet the needs of your semiconductor customers?
A: We are a very broad-based supplier, spanning both wafer fab and assembly and test. In wafer fab, such areas as advanced gate stacks and high-k and middle-gate materials are challenges that our customers are facing as they develop 45-nm chips. Some of those customers have products that will be going into production this year and next, so we need to provide solutions both in the metrology and macro-defect inspection side. And if we move to the back end of semiconductor production, the idea of trying to balance capability with cost of ownership is an ongoing challenge. Here, we are helping customers move to a new way of thinking. Traditionally, they have thought in terms of wafers per hour, and what we are encouraging them to look at is wafer classifications per hour.
Q: Do semiconductor manufacturers now see the value of all-surface inspection?
A: We think so. Our company pioneered the all-surface concept about five years ago, and now more customers want a single integrated solution that lets them inspect the front, back, and edges of the wafer all at one time. With this method, we can quickly identify process excursions, regardless of what the source happens to be. Once we’ve detected the defect with our all-surface inspection modules, the locations are noted, and we can take images of all three surfaces in about a minute per wafer. This is a very fast way to collect a rich data set and identify and analyze root causes of defects so the customer can take corrective action.
Q: Can you cite some examples of Rudolph products that are poised for strong growth, given the trends we’ve been discussing?
A: As noted, we see a growing need for automated macro-defect inspection, in light of the cost pressures and the growing complexity in the semiconductor process. Among other trends, process technology customers in the memory space are moving to copper technology, an area where we have some leading metrology capability. In our software products, we see continued growth in TrueADC, a fab-wide software package that is helping customers gain some significant productivity improvement because it can extract and consolidate data from multiple tools and multiple operations. In addition, we see increased interest from customers in 3-D inspection and optical critical-dimension metrology.
Q: What application areas look most promising for the future?
A: Flash memory applications continue to grow across many industries, which is driving new challenges in stack packaging and inspection on the test floor. We see this trend particularly in the US, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. The automotive market continues to push for higher quality and zero defects in semiconductor components. That market also is driving the need for more inspection of ultra-thin wafers, especially in Europe. Increasing CMOS sensor resolution is another area of growth, with cell-phone cameras becoming ubiquitous. That, in turn, is driving the need for smaller pixel size, but with high-throughput, low-cost production. Right now, Rudolph tools are involved in the production of about half of the world’s CMOS sensors.
Q: Will most of your business come from outside North America?
A: Yes. Currently, more than 70% of our sales come from international markets. Most of the growth comes from such areas as Asia, Southeast Asia, and China. There is a lot of excitement in those parts of the world, and we need to be there.
Q: How does your company position itself to ride out the inevitable boom-and-bust cycles that affect the semiconductor industry?
A: You need to keep focusing on profitable growth, whether the industry is up or down. While caring for your existing customers, you always need to keep looking for new opportunities. There is a lot of opportunity in the area of process characterization for technology that measures, inspects, and analyzes, and that’s where we believe we’ll see growth. In particular, we will focus on the defect-review process and how we can make it more efficient for customers. The ultimate goal, with our suite of software products, is to eliminate manual review and deliver more informed decisions per hour, rather than the traditional measure of wafers per hour.
Read the first part of this interview.
