A modeling method of semiconductor fabrication flows with extended knowledge hybrid Petri nets

A modeling method of extended knowledge hybrid Petri nets (EKHPNs), incorporating object-oriented methods into hybrid Petri nets (HPNs), was presented and used for the representation and modeling of semiconductor wafer fabrication flows. To model the discrete and continuous parts of a complex semiconductor wafer fabrication flow, the HPNs were introduced into the EKHPNs. Object-oriented methods were combined into the EKHPNs for coping with the complexity of the fabrication flow. Knowledge annotations were introduced to solve input and output conflicts of the EKHPNs. Finally, to demonstrate the validity of the EKHPN method, a real semiconductor wafer fabrication case was used to illustrate the modeling procedure. The modeling results indicate that the proposed method can be used to model a complex semiconductor wafer fabrication flow expediently.