Patent ID: 7614932

Claim:
An end-point detection system for use with a material deposition processing tool which is to be sequentially applied to a stream of substantially identical articles, the system comprising: (a) an end-point detector accommodated within a working area defined by the material deposition processing tool when applied to the article; (b) an integrated monitoring tool accommodated within the material deposition processing tool outside said working area and capable of measuring a thickness of the article; and (b) a control unit associated with the end-point detector and with the integrated monitoring tool, the control unit being in-line operative to be responsive to data coming from the end-point signal for terminating the processing of the article, and to be responsive to the measured data coming from the integrated monitoring tool, so as to analyze these data and determine a correction value to be applied to the end-point signal corresponding to a predetermined value of the thickness of the article achieved by the processing thereof.