FUNDAMENTALS OF PROCESS CONTROL

This is the introduction to a series of 10 installments which will discuss fundamental truths about process control—inspection and metrology—for the semiconductor industry.
By fundamental, we imply the following:

• Unassailable: They are self-evident, can be proven from first principles, or are supported by the dominant behavior at fabs worldwide
• Unchanging: These concepts are equally true today for 28nm as they were 15 years ago for 0.25μm, and are expected to hold true in the future
• Universal: They are not unique to a specific segment of process control; rather they apply to process control as a group, as well as to each individual component of process control within the fab