A Novel Framework for Semiconductor Manufacturing Final Test Yield Classification Using Machine Learning Techniques

Advanced data analysis tools and techniques are important for semiconductor companies to gain competitive advantage. In particular, yield prediction tools, which fully utilize production data, help to improve operational efficiency and reduce production costs. This paper introduces a novel and scalable framework for semiconductor manufacturing Final Test (FT) yield prediction leveraging machine learning techniques. This framework is able to predict FT yield at wafer fabrication stage, so that FT low yield problems can be caught at an earlier production stage compared to past studies. Our work presents a robust solution to automatically handle both numerical and categorical production related data without prior knowledge of the low yield root cause. Gaussian Mixture Models, One Hot Encoder and Label Encoder techniques are adopted for data pre-processing. To improve model performance for both binary and multi-class classification, model selection and model ensemble using the F1-macro method is demonstrated. The framework has been applied to three mass production products with different wafer technologies and manufacturing flows. All of them achieved high F1-macro test score indicative of the robustness of our framework.