A virtual equipment as a test bench for evaluating Virtual Metrology algorithms

This paper presents a Virtual Equipment which serves as a testing environment for evaluating Virtual Metrology (VM) algorithms prior to their implementation into semiconductor fab structures. The Virtual Equipment merges statistical simulation with physical simulation to generate test data sets for various common and uncommon states of the processing equipment. The input data is based on historical fab data and synthetically generated data. Main result of the presented work is the bidirectional link of statistical methods with physical simulations which is the core of the virtual test environment. The testing of VM algorithms can be controlled via a Graphical User Interface (GUI). A simplified physical simulation of a Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) reaction chamber is set up based on CAD data as an example of the physical simulation part.