Patent ID: 7195540
Filing Date: 2007-03-27
Classification: B05C,B24B

Abstract:
1. A method for monitoring a vacuum-based process sequentially applied to a stream of substantially identical articles by a processing tool, so as to terminate the operation of the processing tool upon detecting an end-point signal corresponding to a predetermined value of a thickness of a layer of the article being processed, the method comprising: (a) operating said processing tool to apply said process to the article, while continuously applying an end-point detector to said article under processing and generating the end-point signal; (b) in response to the end-point signal generated by the end-point detector, completing the processing of said article, (c) applying an in-line monitoring by an integrated monitoring tool to said article after the completeness of said processing thereof, and measuring the thickness value resulting from the processing; (d) analyzing the measured thickness value, and upon determining that the end-point signal is to be corrected by a correction value corresponding to the predetermined value of the thickness, adjusting said end-point signal by said correction value for using the corrected end-point signal for terminating the processing of another article in the stream of articles.