KLA Launches New Automotive Product Portfolio to Improve Chip Yield and Reliability

New inspection systems and innovative inline screening solutions help fabs improve product quality

MILPITAS, Calif., June 23, 2021 – Today, KLA announced the release of four new products for automotive chip manufacturing: the 8935 High-Throughput Patterned Wafer Inspection System, the C205 Wideband Plasma Patterned Wafer Inspection System, the Surfscan® SP A2/A3 Unpatterned Wafer Inspection System, and the I-PAT® Inline Defective Part Average Test Screening Solution. The automotive industry is paying close attention to innovations in areas such as electrification, connectivity, advanced driver assistance, and autonomous driving. This means that cars require more electronic devices, which drives the demand for semiconductor chips. Due to the core position of chips in vehicle driving and safety applications, their reliability is critical, so automotive chips must meet strict quality standards.

KLA's new Surfscan® SP A2/A3, 8935 and C205 inspection systems and innovative I-PAT® inline screening solutions improve automotive chip yield and reliability.

“Today’s vehicles contain thousands of semiconductor chips that sense their surroundings, make driving decisions and implement controls,” said Ahmad Khan, president of KLA’s Semiconductor Process Control business unit. “These chips cannot afford to fail – a fact that has led chipmakers to seek new strategies to discover and reduce reliability-related defects before they are integrated into vehicles. Tailored for fabs producing automotive chips, our new products detect defects that could impact reliability at the source of chip manufacturing and provide innovative solutions for inline screening. These efforts will help fabs manufacture high-quality, highly reliable chips at high yields while maximizing production capacity.”

The three new inspection tools form a complementary defect discovery, monitoring and control solution for chip manufacturing at larger design nodes in the automotive industry. The Surfscan SP A2/A3 unpatterned wafer inspectors combine DUV optical systems and advanced algorithms to make the system sensitive and fast enough to identify and eliminate process defects that may cause reliability issues on automotive chips, and also ensure that process equipment operates at optimal performance. For R&D and mass production, the C205 patterned wafer inspector uses wide-band spectroscopy and NanoPoint™ technology, making it highly sensitive to critical defects and helping to accelerate the optimization of new processes and devices. For mass manufacturing, the 8935 patterned wafer inspector uses new optical technology and DefectWise® AI solutions to capture a variety of critical defects with low noise ratios and quickly and accurately identify process deviations that may affect the final quality of the chip.

I-PAT is an innovative inline screening solution that runs on KLA inspection and data analysis systems. I-PAT first extracts defect signatures from all wafer data collected by high-speed 8-series inspectors, such as the 8935 or Puma™ laser scanning inspectors, during key process steps. I-PAT then uses custom machine learning algorithms on the SPOT™ production platform and the statistical analysis capabilities of the Klarity® defect management system to identify abnormal defects, so that risky chips can be removed from the supply chain.

In addition to developing new products customized for automotive chip manufacturing, KLA continues to work closely with the automotive industry. From KLA's membership in the Automotive Electronics Council (AEC), which sets certification standards for electronic components in the automotive industry, to the company's second headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, KLA is committed to ensuring that the automotive industry achieves stringent electronic quality standards.

"The new products we announced today expand our comprehensive portfolio of inspection, metrology, data analytics and process systems to support the automotive electronics ecosystem," added Oreste Donzella, executive vice president of KLA's Electronics, Packaging and Components (EPC) business unit. "Each of these products plays a critical role in ensuring the excellent yield, reliability and performance of the chips, components, printed circuit boards and displays that make up automotive electronics."

For more details on the 8935, C205, Surfscan SP A2/A3 and I-PAT, including key features, applications and markets beyond automotive, please refer to the product fact sheets. To maintain the high performance and productivity of these systems, KLA's global comprehensive service network provides technical support. For more information on KLA's automotive products, please visit the KLAAdvance newsroom.

About KLA:

KLA is committed to developing industry-leading equipment and services to support innovation throughout the electronics industry. We provide advanced process control and process support solutions for wafer and mask manufacturing, integrated circuits, packaging, printed circuit boards and flat panel displays. Our expert team of physicists, engineers, data engineers and problem solvers work closely with leading global customers and jointly design solutions that move the world forward.

Automotive product portfolio to improve chip yield and reliability