Patent ID: 6456899
Filing Date: 2002-09-24
Classification: G03F,G05B,Y02P,Y10S

Abstract:
A digital computer for automatically classifying defects in a semiconductor wafer comprising:means for identifying the background layers in a single reference semiconductor wafer image resulting in a layer identification image, said background layer identifying means including a background layer segmenter for dividing said reference semiconductor wafer image into different physical regions, said background layer identifying means further including a background layer classifier for classifying said physical regions of said reference semiconductor wafer image; means for registering a defect semiconductor wafer image to said reference semiconductor image and subsequently detecting a defect in said defect semiconductor image; means for classifying said detected defect using features of said defect; a database for storing precomputed information and sharing information between said background layer classifier and said detected defect classifying means; and means for associating said classified detected defect with said layer identification image resulting in a context-based classification of said defect.