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Foundry
The wafer foundry is responsible for transforming circuit designs into mass-producible chips, focusing on completing each process such as thin film deposition, etching, wiring, and thermal treatment in a stable and repeatable manner. As the process nodes gradually advance from mature processes to 7nm, 5nm, 3nm, and even GAA architecture, the material stacking inside the chips becomes denser, significantly increasing inter-layer interfaces, metal wiring density, and thermal load, making process consistency and structural stability control crucial. In actual mass production, even minor changes in process parameters, material sources, or equipment status can lead to differences in component characteristics or electrical distribution. For example, the interface quality between the contact layer and the wiring layer, dielectric layer breakdown voltage, metal migration behavior, and lifespan under thermal cycling all affect whether the chip can operate stably. Therefore, wafer foundries must continuously verify whether the process results are consistent and can be replicated over the long term during R&D introduction, trial production adjustments, mass production scaling, and cross-factory production. MA-tek assists wafer foundries in establishing traceable criteria at these critical points. We confirm inter-layer and interface quality through high-resolution structural analysis, clarify the sources of anomalies with failure localization, and predict the stability of materials and structures under long-term use through reliability verification. These results can be directly applied to process parameter adjustments, yield improvement, supply chain management, and new process introduction decisions.
Applications
Applicable service items
Service Categories Analysis/Testing Confirmable/locatable content MA-tek provides technology
Process Development Differences after adjusting new process parameters film thickness, interface quality, grain structure TEM / STEM / XPS / SIMS / AFM
Trial production introduction Yield instability or parameter deviation Coating uniformity, contact reliability, metal migration FA (OBIRCH / TIVA), material cross-section analysis
Before packaging delivery The cause of electrical changes after packaging is unknown. Interface stress, RDL / UBM integrity Comparison of cross-sections before/after packaging, SAM / X-ray
long-term reliability Assessment of lifespan and product tolerance Aging, thermal cycling, dielectric breakdown HTOL, EM, TDDB, HAST, TC, HTS

 

Common Questions
Q1. Why are there yield differences in the same process node across different batches?
A. Minor variations in material batches, equipment parameters, or process conditions can affect the interlayer structure and electrical properties.
Q2. When customers report functional anomalies, how can we quickly clarify the source of responsibility?
A. It is necessary to accurately locate the abnormal points and confirm whether they originate from the wafer process, packaging, or design.
Q3. Is the electrical shift after packaging related to the wafer processing?
A. Packaging heat/stress may affect the metal layer or interface, but it needs to be cross-checked with the process structural status to make a determination.
Q4. How to evaluate the lifetime reliability of wafer processes in practical applications?
A. It is necessary to construct a lifetime model through accelerated stress testing and verify the degradation mechanism.
Q5. How to reduce risks when introducing new equipment or materials?
A. Establish baseline samples and verify consistency with structural and electrical data.
Sign Up
01.16
2026
This seminar is themed "Silicon Exploration of the Future: The Intelligence Quest of AI × Silicon Photonics," emphasizing how the integration of AI, high-speed computing, silicon photonics, and advanced packaging technology redefines computing efficiency. The concept of "Intelligence Quest" symbolizes the identification and analysis of the best opportunities for future technological development through these key technologies.
For more information: https://www.matek.com/zh-TW/Seminar/detail/all/20250327
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