NEWS

The Cornerstone of the Wafer World: The Deep Interconnection Between Yield and Reliability

In the precise world of semiconductor manufacturing, the wafer serves as the cradle for chips, and the yield and reliability in its production process are like intertwined branches, closely linked. For wafers from the same batch, the level of yield directly reflects the strength of reliability. When yield improves, it means that more chips in the batch meet quality standards and can operate stably, thereby enhancing their reliability.

This strong correlation is no coincidence but stems from the intrinsic relationship between defects in the chip manufacturing process. The types of defects that cause chip failures are fundamentally the same as those that lead to early reliability issues. For example, during chip manufacturing, tiny impurity particles may cause deviations in circuit patterns during the lithography process. If these deviations exceed acceptable limits, the chip may be deemed defective during testing, directly resulting in yield loss. Even if it passes testing and enters the usage phase, it is highly likely to malfunction due to circuit abnormalities during operation, leading to reliability issues. Another example is defects such as open or short circuits in the metal interconnects within the chip. These not only cause the chip to fail electrical performance tests initially, reducing yield, but also inevitably prevent the chip from functioning properly in practical applications, severely impacting its reliability.

At the microscopic level, whether defects affect yield or threaten reliability, they negatively impact the physical structure and electrical performance of the chip. These defects may disrupt the normal operation of transistors within the chip, interfere with the transmission paths of electronic signals, or affect the stability of connections between chip layers. It is this shared root cause that establishes an unbreakable bond between yield and reliability, where a single issue can affect the whole system.

As a provider of comprehensive semiconductor chip protection solutions, DOHONE has supplied over 1,000 semiconductor chip handling and storage cassettes to industry clients, helping semiconductor chip manufacturers enhance product yield.