METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR YIELD AND FAILURE ANALYSIS IN THE MANUFACTURING OF SEMICONDUCTORS

A yield and failure analysis system having composite wafermaps provides the ability to view numerous lots on a single screen, identifying the semiconductor manufacturing process, which caused wafer failures and the associated malfunctioning equipment. A wafer inspection instrumentation (28) probes each wafer within a given lot and applies a series of tests. Wafer defect data is stored in a first relational database (46) for compiling a composite wafermap for each lot. Collected wafer defect data is converted into a FFT signature. Present wafer defect data is compared with stored converted wafer defect data patterns to generate correlation coefficients. When the correlation coefficients are within a predetermined range, the converted wafer defect data pattern is stored in the second relational database (47). Data may be accessed from both databases by a user interface (44), enabling the user to analyze data in real time and generate reports.