Assessing the impact of the 450mm wafer size transition on manufacturing facility automated material handling systems

The emergence of 450mm diameter wafers and the associated equipment technology will once again challenge how greenfield semiconductor manufacturing factories are configured and how the production process will be automated. These changes to manufacturing facilities require seamless integration of the automation designer and manufacturing facility designer to address the full proliferation of the Automated Material Handling System (AMHS) within the production space and to account for the expanding ceiling-mounted front opening unified pod (FOUP) storage. Due to the larger physical dimensions of 450mm manufacturing equipment, existing generations of 300mm fabs are not optimized for 450mm manufacturing. In fact, the production (cleanroom) areas of most state-of-the-art 300mm fabs are too small by almost half to support efficient 450mm manufacturing. Other anticipated changes - such as taller cleanroom ceiling heights and increased floor loading specifications - are required to enable future generations of 450mm manufacturing equipment and to enable the ITRS roadmap. These facility changes may, in turn, drastically impact the way in which AMHS systems are configured in order to maximize facility productivity. This paper will discuss the anticipated changes that 450mm manufacturing facilities will undergo and how the AMHS must adapt to and take advantage of these facility differences. It also reinforces our recommendation that the AMHS design process be executed concurrently with the development of the process tool layout, cleanroom and factility design processes.