2002 IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing Best Paper Award
The IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor
Manufacturing Best Paper Award is presented to the authors of
that paper considered by the Transactions' Editorial Staff and
reviewers to be the outstanding paper published during the year.
The Award is based on the accuracy, originality, and importance
of the technical concepts, as well as the quality and readability
of the manuscript. The Best Paper is also based on the immediate
or potential impact that this work will have on the overall semiconductor
manufacturing industry.
The Editorial Staff is pleased to announce that the paper entitled,
"Real-time Predictive Control of Photoresist Film Thickness
Uniformity," by Lay Lay Lee, Charles D. Schaper, and Weng
Khuen Ho has been recognized as the best paper published in the
2002 Transactions. This paper, which appeared in the February
issue, has been chosen because it demonstrates the gains possible
through development and application of advanced process control
methods in photoresist processing. By combining arrays of real-time
thickness sensors, a multizone hotplate for actuation, and generalized
predictive control algorithms, real-time control of resist thickness
is achieved and tenfold improvements in thickness uniformity are
shown. The work vividly shows the improvements possible with real-time
sensing, actuation, and control in advanced semiconductor processing.
Lay
Lay Lee received the B.Eng. degree (with honors) in electrical
engineering in 1998 and is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree
in electrical engineering from National University of Singapore
(NUS), Singapore. She was a Visiting Researcher at Stanford University,
CA, in 1999 and 2000. Her research interests include process control
and applications of control and signal processing in semiconductor
manufacturing.
Charles
D. Schaper received the B.S. and M.S. degrees chemical engineering
from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and the Ph.D. degree
in chemical engineering from the University of California, Santa
Barbara, in 1990.
He is a Senior Research Scientist in electrical engineering at
Stanford University, Stanford, CA. His current research interests
include molecular methods of pattern generation for nanofabrication
applications and temperature control for lithography. He has consulted
with industry on numerous projects including RTP, RTCVD, MOCVD,
and thermal cycling for semiconductor processing.
Dr. Schaper was a co-winner of the American Statistics in Chemistry
Award.
Weng
Khuen Ho received the B.S. degree (with honors) in electrical
engineering from the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore,
in 1987 and the Ph.D. degree in control engineering from the Department
of Electrical Engineering, NUS, in 1992. Currently, he is the
director for Intelligent Control in the Faculty of Engineering
and an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering
in NUS. His research interests include process control, knowledge-based
adaptive control, and application of control and signal processing
in the manufacturing of semiconductors. He was a Visiting Scholar
in Stanford University, Stanford, CA, in 1998 and 1999. He has
co-authored (with C. C. Huang and T. H. Lee) the book, Adaptive
Control (Instrument Society of America, 1993).
Duane S. Boning, T-SM Editor
Cambridge, MA, USA