Patent ID: 7016754

Claim:
A method of adjusting a spatial and temporal profile of process conditions of a substrate during processing, the method being performed using a process apparatus and a controller, the controller and process apparatus being coupled so the controller is capable of controlling the spatial and temporal profile of process conditions experienced by the substrate, the controller being capable of using at least one control parameter, the method comprising the steps of: i. constructing a perturbation model that relates changes in the control parameters to resulting changes in the spatial and temporal profile of process conditions experienced by the substrate, wherein constructing the perturbation model comprises: a) measuring baseline control parameter values α0 comprising spatially resolved and time resolved conditions of the form T0(x,y,t); b) acquiring data for a perturbation model for a number, N, of control parameters, N being at least 1, by performing a minimum of N condition profile measurements, wherein each profile results from perturbing one or more of the control parameters until each of the control parameters has been perturbed; and c) constructing the perturbation model by aligning and synchronizing the profile data so that the data share the same time scale to allow representing the perturbation model as T ⁡ ( x , y , t ) = T o ⁡ ( x , y , t ) + ∑ i = 1 N ⁢ ⁢ B i ⁡ ( x , y , t ) ⁢ Δ ⁢ ⁢ α ⁡ ( i ) wherein the functions Bi(x,y,t) are basis functions in the perturbation model, and Δα(i) are the perturbations in the ith control parameter from nominal α0(i) and estimating the basis functions using the data from step b) to complete the perturbation model; ii. using the perturbation model with at least one of a performance objective and a constraint to derive optimized control parameters; and iii. operating the controller with the optimized control parameters.