Method for manufacturing a semiconductor device including wafer aging, probe inspection, and feeding back the results of the inspection to the device fabrication process

A method for manufacturing a semiconductor device, including:

• a wafer completion process comprising a plurality of processing steps for incorporating functions in a wafer, the wafer having a plurality of chips;
• a wafer aging process for aging the wafer fabricated by said wafer completion process, inspecting the functions of the wafer and distinguishing between non-defective and defective chips;
• a probe inspection process for inspecting the functions of the wafer aged by said wafer aging process and distinguishing between non-defective and defective chips;
• a dicing process for separating one by one the plurality of chips in the wafer inspected by said probe inspection process;
• a selection process for sorting out the chips separated by said dicing process into non-defective and defective chips in accordance with a failure information provided from said wafer aging process and that provided from said probe inspection process;
• and
• a feedback process for analyzing the failure information provided from said wafer aging process and that provided from said probe inspection process, estimating a cause of failure and feeding back the result of the estimation of the cause of failure to said wafer completion process, wherein said feedback process includes a failure map making process for making a failure map in accordance with said failure information, and an analysis process for analyzing which processing steps in said wafer completion process causes a failure, on the basis of said failure map.