A method includes identifying a bottleneck operation of a plurality of operations in a sequence recipe. The plurality of operations are associated with transporting and processing a plurality of substrates in a substrate processing system. The method further includes determining, based on the bottleneck operation, a takt time for the plurality of substrates. The takt time is an amount of time between a first substrate entering the substrate processing system and a second substrate entering the substrate processing system. The method further includes determining a plurality of queue times. Each of the plurality of queue times corresponds to a respective operation of the plurality of operations. The method further includes causing, based on the takt time and the plurality of queue times, the plurality of substrates to be processed by the substrate processing system.

A deadlock determination method includes constructing a new WRG and determining a deadlock. At least a process step that includes a plurality of resources is selected from process steps in a WRG that supports transporting a single piece of material. The plurality of resources corresponding to the selected process step are combined. A total capacity of each of the process steps is changed according to a combination result to construct the new WRG that supports transporting a plurality of pieces of material. The plurality of resources include apparatuses for performing the process steps. The total capacity is a sum of a number of workstations of resources corresponding to each process step. Determining a deadlock includes determining whether a piece of material scheduling deadlock occurs based on the new WRG. The plurality of resources include apparatuses for performing the process steps.

An article storage device includes a load port configured to load and unload a plurality of articles, a plurality of shelves configured to load the articles, a transportation robot configured to transport the articles between the load port and the shelves or between the shelves, a receiving part configured to receive operation commands of the transportation robot from an upper system, a calculating part configured to calculate a setting value of an order of priority with respect to the operation commands, and a control part configured to control the transportation robot to perform an operation command having a high setting value of an order of priority among the operation commands.

In one embodiment, a system includes a wafer-handling system of a semiconductor-manufacturing system. The wafer-handling system is configured to hold one or more wafers for processing. The system also includes one or more processing components configured to physically treat the one or more wafers; a controller configured to operate the processing components; and a text bot in communication with the semiconductor-manufacturing system and configured to respond to a user inquiry.

An information processing apparatus detects an abnormality sign in a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus. The apparatus includes: a sensor data collector configured to acquire sensor waveform data with respect to a sensor value axis and a time axis measured by a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus that is executing a process according to a same recipe; a monitoring band calculator configured to calculate each monitoring band for the sensor value axis and the time axis used in a waveform monitoring method from a predetermined number or more of the sensor waveform data; and an abnormality sign detector configured to monitor a waveform of the sensor waveform data using each monitoring band for the sensor value axis and the time axis and detect an abnormality sign of the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus.

Provided are an auxiliary wafer, a preparation method of the auxiliary wafer, and a semiconductor production process. The preparation method includes: providing an initial wafer; forming a protective film on a surface of the initial wafer, wherein a material of the protective film comprises aluminum oxide of a low-temperature phase; and carrying out an annealing process on the protective film to transform at least part of aluminum oxide from the low-temperature phase into a high-temperature phase to form a protective layer.

The present disclosure provides a method for dispatching a material. The method includes obtaining a material listing and a process sequence, the material including all materials that are dispatchable, and the material listing including all the materials that are dispatchable and their current statuses; inquiring about each material in the material listing to determine a current status of each material; according to the current status of each material and the process sequence, simulating and calculating a plurality of moving paths for materials in the material listing and recording process time efficiencies of the plurality of moving paths, each moving path including a collection of moving sequences of materials in the moving path on a line of time; using a moving path with a highest process time efficiency among the plurality of moving paths as a selected moving path and storing the selected moving path in a dispatching queue; and performing a dispatching on the materials, according to the selected moving path in the dispatching queue. The technical solution provided by the present disclosure realizes the optimal dispatching of each of the materials in a complex system. Thus, the process time is saved, and the process yield is increased.

Methods and systems for calibrating metrology tool offset values to match measurement results across a fleet of metrology tools are presented herein. The calibration of offset values is based on measurements of inline, production wafers and does not require the use of specially fabricated and characterized quality control (QC) wafers. In this manner, the entire process flow to calibrate metrology tool offset values is automated and fully integrated within a high volume semiconductor fabrication process flow. In a further aspect, the implementation of a new offset value is regulated by one or more predetermined control limit values. In another further aspect, the measured values of a parameter of interest are adjusted to compensate for the effects of measurement time on the wafer under measurement.

According to one aspect of the present disclosure, a transport system includes a mobile cassette unit capable of storing a plurality of structures and supplying the structures to an inspection unit, wherein each of the structures includes a substrate on which a plurality of devices are formed, and an interconnect member including a contact section that electrically contacts an electrode of the plurality of devices.

A controlling apparatus for controlling operation of a substrate processing apparatus includes a first CTC, and a second CTC. When the first CTC stops operating, the second CTC is preset to control each module in the substrate processing apparatus in place of the first CTC. As the first CTC and the second CTC are dualized to provide the controlling apparatus, even when one of the CTCs stops operating, another dualized CTC is used to control the substrate processing apparatus, so that operation-stop of the substrate processing system is prevented and entire process efficiency is increased.