Wafer Defect Identification with Optimal Hyper-Parameter Tuning of Support Vector Machine Using the Deep Feature of ResNet 101

Abstract

As semiconductor processing technologies continue to advance, semiconductor wafers are becoming more densely packed and intricate, resulting in a higher incidence of surface imperfections. Therefore, it is crucial to detect these defects early and accurately classify them to pinpoint the root causes of the defects in the manufacturing process, ultimately leading to improved yield. Therefore, defect detection is critical in the industrial production of monocrystalline silicon. This study employs deep learning techniques to propose a framework for detecting defects on silicon wafers, focusing on optimizing the hyperparameters of support vector machines (SVM). Three methods were utilized to fine-tune the SVM parameters: Bayesian optimization, grid search, and random search techniques. This study demonstrates how selecting optimal values for SVM parameters can lead to better classification. Additionally, real manufacturing data were utilized to evaluate the performance of the proposed SVM classifier, with a comparison to state-of-the-art techniques in the field. By using deep features from ResNet 101 and a support vector machine, this work achieves 74.5% accuracy in identifying wafer defects without employing any optimization technique. However, the performance of the model was further improved by utilizing the random search optimization technique, which yielded the best result among the three optimization techniques tested, with an accuracy of 88.1%.