Method and apparatus for autonomous identification of particle contamination due to isolated process events and systematic trends

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon computer-executable instructions that, in response to execution by a system including a processor, cause the system to perform operations, the operations including:

• comparing a normal contamination function to one or more deviant contamination functions, wherein the normal contamination function characterizes systematic particle contamination as a function of a plurality of tool parameters associated with one or more tools of a semiconductor fabrication system based on analysis of normal tool process logs that record acceptable contamination levels that are within a contamination specification for a semiconductor material process, and each deviant contamination function of the one or more deviant contamination functions characterizes the systematic particle contamination as another function of the plurality of tool parameters based on analysis of the normal tool process logs and one distinct deviant tool process log of a plurality of deviant tool process logs that record deviant contamination levels that exceed the contamination specification;
• and
• identifying at least one of the plurality of tool parameters as a cause of the systematic particle contamination based on comparison of the normal contamination function to the one or more deviant contamination functions, wherein tool maintenance one or more tools is controlled based on the at least one tool parameter identified as the cause of the systematic particle contamination.