Patent ID: 7529631

Claim:
A defect detection system comprising: a data acquiring section that acquires time series data of a device parameter of each of a plurality of manufacturing devices including an exposure device, and information on defect distribution in an area with a size smaller than a size of each of a plurality of chip areas arranged on a wafer processed in each of the plurality of manufacturing devices; a pattern classifying section that assembles the information on the defect distribution in units of shot areas of the exposure device or in units of chip areas, and classifies the assembled defect distributions to a defect pattern; a feature quantity calculating section that statistically processes the time series data and calculates a feature quantity; a significant difference test section that calculates an occurrence frequency distribution of the feature quantity in units of the shot area or the chip area in which the defect pattern exists and an occurrence frequency distribution of the feature quantity in units of the shot area or the chip area in which the defect pattern does not exist, and determines the presence or absence of a significant difference between the frequency distributions, the significant difference being determined to exist when a significant difference test value is smaller than a test reference value and determined not to exist when the significant difference test value is larger than the test reference value; and a defect detecting section that detects the device parameter corresponding to the feature quantity as the cause of defect of the defect pattern when the significant difference is determined to exist.