Patent ID: 7444572

Claim:
A method of creating and/or modifying a built-in self test (BIST) table for monitoring a thermal processing system in real-time, comprising: positioning a plurality of wafers at different heights in a processing chamber in the thermal processing system; creating a measured dynamic pre-processing process response while subjecting the plurality of wafers to a pre-processing process, wherein at least one first process parameter is changed from a first value to a second value within operating limits established for the pre-processing process; executing a pre-processing real-time dynamic model to generate a predicted dynamic pre-processing process response for the plurality of wafers when the at least one first process parameter is changed from the first value to the second value; determining a pre-processing dynamic estimation error for the pre-processing process using a difference between the predicted dynamic pre-processing process response and the measured dynamic pre-processing process response; and determining if the pre-processing dynamic estimation error can be associated with a pre-existing first BIST rule in the BIST table having one or more pre-existing first operational thresholds and first warning thresholds, and when the pre-processing dynamic estimation error cannot be associated with any pre-existing first BIST rule in the BIST table, either creating a new first BIST rule for the pre-processing process, or stopping the pre-processing process when a new first BIST rule cannot be created.