Using modeling for identifying a location of a fault in an RF transmission system for a plasma system

A plasma system comprising:

• a plasma processing chamber;
• an RF transmission system coupled to an RF input of the plasma processing chamber;
• an RF generator having an output coupled to the RF transmission system, such that the RF transmission system has a plurality of stages that extend between the output of the RF generator, and extending to the RF input of the plasma processing chamber, wherein each of the stages is one or more physical components;
• and
• a controller coupled to the RF generator and the plasma processing chamber, the controller including logic on non-transitory computer readable media that is executable for identifying a fault in the RF transmission system by selecting two or more of the plurality of stages and propagating a measured output of the selected stage through a baseline RF model of the RF transmission system;
• wherein the baseline RF model is a characterized model of the RF transmission system generated when the RF transmission system was known to be functioning without fault, the baseline RF model of the RF transmission system is generated by applying a characterization recipe to process a plurality of wafers within the plasma processing chamber and measuring at least one parameter of an output of the plurality of stages of the RF transmission system during the processing of the plurality of wafers,
• wherein the controller is configured to measure and compare an output of a stage of the plurality of stages of the RF transmission system to a predicted value for a corresponding stage of the baseline RF model, the comparing used to identify if the fault is associated with the stage, wherein physical components associated with stages with identified faults are identified for repair without disturbing physical components of other stages of the RF transmission system.

A method for locating a fault in RF transmission systems, comprising:

• characterizing a first RF transmission system having a plurality of physical stages by using a characterization recipe that is executed by processing a plurality of wafers within a processing chamber and measuring at least one parameter of each of the plurality of physical stages in the first RF transmission system during the processing of the plurality of wafers to produce a baseline RF model, the first RF transmission system being a golden RF transmission system identified to be operating properly;
• selecting, from a second RF transmission system, a physical stage as an initial physical stage from a plurality of physical stages of the second RF transmission system, the plurality of physical stages of the second RF transmission system extending between an RF generator and extending to a chuck of a second processing chamber;
• measuring an output of the initial physical stage of the second RF transmission system;
• propagating the output measured from the initial physical stage of the second RF transmission system through the baseline RF model of the first RF transmission system, the propagating is configured to produce a resulting RF model for the second RF transmission system;
• and
• identifying a point of deflection in the resulting RF model, the point of deflection is identified as a deviation from the baseline RF model, and the point in deflection in the resulting RF model identifies a physical fault stage among the plurality of physical stages of the second RF transmission system;
• wherein the identified point of deflection is used to repair at least one component associated with the physical fault stage of the second RF transmission system of the second processing chamber.