KLA-Tencor Launches New Inspection and Analysis Systems: CANDELA® 8620 HB-LED Inspection System, ICOS® WI-2220 LED Wafer Inspector & KLARITY® LED Defect Analysis System

“The industry's current consensus estimates state that by 2013 the LED market will be growing at a compound annual growth rate of 25 percent or higher,” said Jeff Donnelly, group vice president, Growth and Emerging Markets at KLA-Tencor. “Today’s LED device makers are challenged with increasing performance at a lower cost, while supporting the industry’s aggressive growth rate. With proven reliability and ease-of-use, KLA-Tencor’s comprehensive portfolio of LED defect inspection and analysis solutions is designed to enable tighter process control and overall yield improvements for LED production at decreased cost per lumen.”

CANDELA® 8620 INSPECTION SYSTEM FOR HIGH BRIGHTNESS LED MANUFACTURING:
Designed for high brightness light emitting diode (HBLED) manufacturers, the Candela 8620 provides automated defect inspection for LED materials such as gallium nitride, sapphire, and silicon carbide—enabling enhanced quality control of both opaque and transparent substrates, faster time-to-root cause, and improved Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) reactor uptime and yield.

With its proprietary optical design and detection technology, the Candela 8620 detects and classifies sub-micron defects that are not consistently identified by current inspection methods—thereby enabling for the first time a production line monitor for these yieldlimiting defects. According to industry sources, as HBLED manufacturers transition production to larger wafer sizes and introduce new patterned sapphire substrate (PSS) processes, the economic impact of resulting process-induced defects is estimated at millions of dollars in lost product revenue per year, and MOCVD epi process issues may result in as much as 40 percent of overall defect-induced yield loss.

“The enhanced performance of KLA-Tencor’s Candela 8620 is an important part of our yield and cost reduction efforts,” commented Iain Black, vice president of manufacturing engineering and innovation at Philips Lumileds, an early adopter of the Candela 8620 system. “The system has been an important element in accelerating our process ramp as we transition to 150 mm substrates and is allowing us to select sapphire vendors with the highest quality.”

Defects from substrate and epi processes impact device performance, yield and field reliability.
The Candela 8620 can detect:
• Substrate defects such as micro-scratches and micro-cracks which can create epi process defects and directly impact LED yield and reliability
• Defect sources from lithography and etch processes for patterned sapphire such as missing bumps and resist voids, resulting in epi defects or reduced lumen output
• Macro- and micro- defects in MOCVD processes, including hexagonal pits and bumps leading to electrical failure, and epi cracks which can adversely impact field reliability

LED substrate and epitaxy layers pose significant inspection challenges due to high levels of background signal and nuisance defects. The Candela 8620's imaging and detection system is optimized to enhance the signal from relevant defects-of-interest while suppressing background noise. Aided by its multi-channel detection optics, the system additionally allows high purity classification of such defects, thereby allowing comprehensive statistical process control of critical MOCVD processes.

“KLA-Tencor is leveraging more than three decades of expertise in semiconductor process control to benefit customers in emerging markets like HBLED,” said Jeff Donnelly, group vice president of Growth and Emerging Markets at KLA-Tencor. “Recently, several HBLED manufacturers have installed the Candela 8620 system, and the system’s proven ability to identify hard-to-detect defects allows customers to realize higher substrate quality and maximize return on MOCVD investment.”

KLA-Tencor currently has hundreds of Candela tools installed around the world. The Candela tool is part of KLA-Tencor’s integrated HBLED portfolio, which includes the ICOS® WI-2220 and WI-2250, and Klarity® LED. Candela tools are backed by KLA-Tencor’s global, comprehensive service network. For more information on KLA-Tencor’s HBLED market offerings, please visit www.kla-tencor.com.

KLARITY LED: DEFECT ANALYSIS AND DATA MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR LED YIELD ENHANCEMENT
Based on the industry-leading KLARITY Defect product for integrated circuit manufacturing, the new KLARITY LED provides a high performance solution for LED device makers, including automated in-line scan analysis for the entire fabwide manufacturing process. The LED industry is evolving from traditional tool-centric manual defect checks, with automated optical inspection only at the end-of-line stage, towards adopting sophisticated fabwide process control and defect analysis with in-line inspection. As a result of front-end to backend connectivity, KLARITY LED delivers faster excursion detection and root-cause analysis than prevailing industry methods to enable effective decision making, thus helping reduce the impact of materials risk and improve yields. With KLARITY LED, KLA-Tencor introduces to LED device makers an advanced in-line alternative solution for automated defect analysis of LED production processes, and an option to more efficiently share performance and reliability data within their organization for faster yield learning, while replacing existing labor-intensive manual report generation methods.

Designed to help LED device makers accelerate yield learning cycles and prompt immediate corrective action,
KLARITY LED includes:
• Automated analysis (intelligent statistical process control excursion and baseline monitor)—supports faster time-to-corrective action with automated knowledge-based reports, extensive drill-down capability and practical decision flow analysis that previously required expert intervention and interpretation
• Advanced Defect Source Analysis—automates the process of root cause analysis for defect sources providing flexible graphical analysis of common and adder defects
• Proprietary Spatial Signature Analysis —identifies spatial signatures, tracks dynamic signature count and leverages stack wafer signatures to identify the root cause for faster detection and corrective action
• Defect image review—provides wafer map point and click access, as well as an image gallery, allowing device makers to validate classification and defect transition commonality identification and rapidly generate automated reports
• Repeater defect detection—identifies repeat defects across an individual wafer, as well as from wafer to wafer

KLARITY LED complements KLA-Tencor’s wafer inspection systems—including the new ICOS WI-2220—to provide an enhanced LED-specific portfolio solution for high return on critical LED inspection investments.

ICOS WI-2220: SCALABLE DEFECT INSPECTION AND IMPROVED COST OF OWNERSHIP IN LED PROCESS CONTROL
The ICOS WI-2220’s automated optical inspection capabilities help LED device makers realize increased yields and reduced production costs. With the ICOS WI-2220, device makers can automate inspection of smaller die sizes that inhibit manual inspection, and for larger die sizes that require rapid corrective action to limit costly materials risk. The new system allows defect inspection of whole and diced wafers up to 200mm, with macro inspection sensitivity in the pre- and post-dice inspection (i.e. front- and back-end) of LED wafers.

Compared to similar products on the market today, the ICOS WI-2220 provides sensitivity to critical defects—while minimizing noise introduced by process variations—and offers outstanding over and underkill performance (die misclassification) at high inspection speed. The new system also offers low-image distortion, advanced optic filtering, rule-based binning (RBB) for real-time auto defect classification, and advanced metrology capabilities at high inspection throughput as a result of new proprietary inspection and data processing technology. This enables increased yields in the manufacturing process through yield base line improvement, excursion control as well as improved dispositioning in outgoing quality control inspections.

The ICOS WI-2220 works in conjunction with the Candela LED unpatterned wafer inspection system to provide comprehensive, yield-improving inspection coverage to the front-end of the line, including analysis for disposition, defect reduction and excursion control. Furthermore, the ICOS WI-2220 is upgradable to the ICOS WI-2250 for flexible configurations.

KLA-Tencor’s integrated LED portfolio of the ICOS WI-Series wafer inspectors, the new KLARITY LED yield management system, and the Candela systems will be showcased at LED Korea 2011, held in conjunction with Semicon Korea, on January 26-28, 2011 in the Coex Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul. All tools are backed by KLA-Tencor’s global, comprehensive service network. For more information, please visit www.klatencor.com/.

About KLA-Tencor:
KLA-Tencor Corporation, a leading provider of process control and yield management solutions, partners with customers around the world to develop state-ofthe-art inspection and metrology technologies. These technologies serve the semiconductor, data storage, LED, photovoltaic, and other related nanoelectronics industries. With a portfolio of industry-standard products and a team of world-class engineers and scientists, the company has created superior solutions for its customers for more than 30 years. Headquartered in Milpitas, California, KLA-Tencor has dedicated customer operations and service centers around the world. Additional information may be found at www.klatencor.com.
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