Patent ID: 8606387

Claim:
A method of automatically determining process parameters for processing equipment, said method comprising: processing at least one substrate in the processing equipment; collecting data on process monitors for the at least one substrate after processing is completed; receiving the collected data by a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) optimization system; revising a sensitivity matrix used by a MIMO optimizer of the MIMO optimization system using the collected data and an adaptive-learning algorithm, wherein the adaptive-learning algorithm minimizes a filtered energy function, wherein an energy function of the filtered energy function is defined to be the square of a difference between a simulated value of a process parameter and a predicted value of the process parameter, and wherein the adaptive-learning algorithm revises the sensitivity matrix by determining a new set of sensitivity coefficients for the revised sensitivity matrix; and determining a set of process parameters for the processing equipment by the MIMO optimizer, wherein the MIMO optimizer uses the revised sensitivity matrix to determine the process parameters.