Techne: Journal of Engineering, Technology and Industrial Applications
Vol. 1 No. 4 (2025): Techne: Journal of Engineering, Technology and Industrial Applications

Semiconductor Wafer Fab Yield: Quantifying Defect Escape, Metrology Uncertainty, and Time-to-Containment Under Process Drift and Inspection Capacity Constraints

Lê Thị Hồng Nhung Lê Thị Hồng Nhung (Vinh University)



Article Info

Publish Date
03 Dec 2025

Abstract

This article presents an engineering-oriented reliability framework for wafer fab yield management that models end-to-end uncertainty propagation from process drift and measurement uncertainty through sampling-based inspection, excursion detection, and containment decisions into distributional outcomes relevant to manufacturing performance, including probability of defect escape, expected affected wafers before containment, false containment probability, time-to-detection and time-to-containment distributions, and an economic yield-loss index. A scenario-based quantitative study is developed for a generic high-volume fab with multiple critical tools and a mix of in-line metrology and inspection, comparing four architectures: baseline control charts with fixed sampling, expanded inspection without governance, model-based excursion detection with limited capacity awareness, and a governance-optimized two-tier architecture that combines drift-aware metrology validation, dynamic sampling allocation based on risk and tool health, staged containment policies, and capacity-aware triage for engineering review. Results show that increasing inspection without governance can reduce defect escape but can increase false containment and cycle-time penalties, that model-based detection improves time-to-detection but can fail under miscalibration and review overload, and that a two-tier governed approach reduces expected yield loss by reducing tail propagation and stabilizing containment decisions under drift and capacity constraints. Three copy-ready tables and complete prompts for data-driven figures are provided for Techne submission.

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