System and method to analyze low yield of wafers caused by abnormal lot events

A method of improving wafer yield of wafers processed within a wafer fabrication facility having the steps of:

• performing a fabrication operation on a plurality of wafers disposed within at least one wafer lot;
• determining if an abnormal event occurred while performing the fabrication operation on the plurality of wafers disposed within the at least one wafer lot by collecting a plurality of non-conforming wafer-based data associated with the plurality of wafers disposed within the wafer lot;
• storing the plurality of non-conforming wafer-based data associated with the plurality of wafers disposed within the wafer lot in a non-conforming wafer based data database;
• defining a plurality of abnormal event types within an abnormal event database;
• and
• associating at least one of the plurality of abnormal event types with at least one of the stored plurality of non-conforming water-based data stored within the non-conforming wafer based data database when an abnormal event occurs during a processing operation;
• determining whether a hold was placed on a lot being processed if an abnormal event occurred;
• placing a hold on a lot being processed if an abnormal event occurred during processing of the lot;
• using a nonconforming wafer tracing system to determine a statistical correlation between an occurrence of an abnormal event and a wafer yield of the plurality of wafers being processed during the occurrence of the abnormal event if the abnormal event occurred during processing of the plurality of waters disposed within the at least one wafer lot;
• and
• using the determined statistical correlation to analyze the fabrication process and thereby improve wafer yield.

A method of using an intelligent engineering data analysis having a non-conforming wafer tracing system to improve a fabrication process comprising the steps of:

• defining a plurality of non-conforming event types to be recorded into a nonconforming wafer tracing system, wherein the nonconforming wafer tracing system has a nonconforming wafer test graphical user interface for inputting a plurality of nonconforming wafer test data;
• using a standard format to collect abnormal event data and non-conforming wafer based data disposed within a manufacturing execution system;
• extracting the collected abnormal event data and the non-conforming wafer based data from an manufacturing execution system into the nonconforming wafer tracing system;
• transforming the extracted abnormal event data and non-conforming wafer based data into a plurality of nonconforming wafer test data, wherein the plurality of nonconforming wafer test data is disposed within the nonconforming wafer tracing system;
• correlating the plurality of nonconforming wafer test data with results of a wafer acceptance test;
• using the nonconforming wafer test graphical user interface to input a plurality of nonconforming wafer test data associated with each lot processed during an occurrence of an abnormal event;
• using the nonconforming wafer test graphical user interface to generate a daily lot report, wherein the daily lot report identifies each lot associated with an abnormal event as a potential lot that may have a low wafer yield;
• sending the daily lot report to recipients who are pre-defined to receive the daily lot report from the nonconforming wafer test graphical user interface;
• and
• providing a flexible analysis function within the nonconforming wafer test graphical user interface to generate at least one engineering data analysis report for analyzing abnormal events that impacted low wafer yield.