Challenge: Historical data retrieval

Every new product or product enhancement starts with a new idea. In the area of process and device design, personal experiences gained through previous developments provide a major contribution to new developments.

Other sources of information and inspiration include colleagues, scientific papers, old lab books and historical electronic experiment records. However, this is where problems arise. Colleagues are not always available and it is not always clear if a certain experiment has already been conducted. Lab books are a great resource for historical data, but in most cases, they are only useful to the people who wrote them, as they know where to look and how to read them. Even if computer files are available, they are often distributed on several file servers or hidden. On top of that file servers only have a one dimensional sorting criterion. Furthermore, every engineer has his/her own way of storing information, which means that various office and other software is used to create documentation. Many good ideas are scrapped simply because there is not enough time to do the necessary research.

Solution:

Most of these problems are caused by the large amount of data and the high degrees of parameter space. When the semiconductor industry was faced with the problem of rising complexity of layouts, the usage of electronic design automation (EDA) software helped overcome this problem. To overcome the hurdles when accessing historical data, a Process Development Execution System (PDES) like XperiDesk is needed.

XperiDesk offers you a way to access the data of previous developments in a structured manner. It replaces the lab books and file servers. Information can be retrieved faster, and previous results can be found and used more efficiently. XperiDesk offers ways to view and search result data (e.g., materials, process steps, machines and experiments) from different viewpoints, categorize data under different aspects, provide a way to link entities together that belong in a common context, and explore the resulting information network. The limitations of file servers and their one dimensional view is removed such that the system can easily answer questions like “Give me all substrates which have been processed by a process step of a certain category or machine,” or “Give me all machines capable of depositing a certain material of category of material.”

In the phase of assembling process steps into process flows, XperiDesk can help assemble, store and print new process flows. By providing access to previously assembled process flows, a designer can use these as building blocks or modules in the newly developed flow. The usage of standard building blocks can drastically reduce design time, especially because the assembly can be easily completed via the drag & drop interface.