Patent Document ID: 20160377552
Application ID: 15166819
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A system for semiconductor device production monitoring comprising: an inspection sub-system including an illumination source and a detector, wherein the illumination source is configured to generate illumination, wherein the inspection sub-system is configured to scan the illumination from the illumination source across a sample, wherein the detector is configured to detect illumination from the sample; and a database maintained in memory for storing inspection results acquired from a reference set of samples with the inspection sub-system, wherein each inspection result from the reference set of samples includes a geometric pattern code for each defect identified on a particular reference sample, wherein the geometric pattern code serves to identify the pattern associated with a particular defect on the particular reference sample; an analyzer, the analyzer including one or more processors and memory, wherein the one or more processors are configured to execute a set of program instructions maintained on the memory, the program instructions are configured to cause the one or processors to: receive an additional inspection result from an additional sample from the inspection sub-system, wherein the additional inspection result includes an additional set of geometric pattern codes for each defect identified within the additional inspection result from the additional sample; retrieve the inspection results acquired from the reference set of samples including the geometric pattern code for each defect identified on the particular reference sample from the database; and correlate the set of geometric pattern codes of the additional sample with the geometric pattern codes from the reference set of samples to identify at least one of one or more new patterns or one or more patterns displaying a frequency of occurrence above a selected threshold.