Patent ID: 8295969

Claim:
A method of selecting processing conditions in the manufacture of a semiconductor device comprising: a. identifying at least one substrate, each substrate with a first unique identification, wherein the first unique identification is used as an index in a database, wherein each substrate further comprises more than one region, each region with a second unique identification; b. performing a process operation on each region according to a recipe of process conditions, wherein the recipes of process conditions are varied in a combinatorial fashion among the regions, wherein the process operation is one of a sputtering operation, a wet process operation, a metrology operation, a chemical vapor deposition operation, an atomic layer deposition operation, an electroless deposition operation, or an electrochemical deposition operation; c. collecting and storing data associated with each process operation in a database wherein the data is associated with each region's unique identification; d. measuring at least one result of the process operation on each of the regions and storing the results of the measurement in a database, wherein the results of the measurement are associated with each region's unique identification; e. analyzing the data associated with each process operation and the results of the measurement; and f. selecting candidate recipes of processing conditions based on the analysis.