Patent ID: 8858296

Claim:
A process control system for use with a processing tool for a material deposition which is to be sequentially applied to a stream of substantially identical patterned articles, the system comprising: an optical end-point detector operable within a working area defined by the processing tool when said processing tool is applied to an article, the optical end-point detector being configured and operable for performing in-situ measurements of one or more parameters of at least a layer of said material being deposited on the patterned article and generating measured data indicative thereof; an optical monitoring tool integrated with the processing tool and operable outside said working area, wherein the optical monitoring unit includes a measurement unit with an optical assembly configured and operable for measuring one or more parameters of at least said one layer and generating data indicative thereof; a control unit connected to the end-point detector and to the integrated monitoring tool, the control unit comprising processing and computational intelligence which is responsive to the data generated by the end-point detector and responsive to the measured data generated by the integrated monitoring tool and is configured for analyzing these data and generating a control signal for terminating the deposition of said layer on the article; and at least one additional end-point detector connectable to the control unit.