The temperature of electrostatic chuck (ESC), a wafer susceptor used in semiconductor etch equipment, must accurately control the temperature of wafers during the etching process to obtain uniform and consistent process results. Failure to control the precise temperature can lead to rejection from the high-volume semiconductor manufacturing site (one of the most high-cost equipment components which can be repaired for its extended use). In this research, we propose a wireless-type on-wafer temperature monitoring system (OTMS) for easier and faster temperature monitoring to help temperature measurements of the repaired ESC in atmospheric and vacuum conditions. The proposed method, which can effectively measure the temperature distribution of the ESC, should manage the operational condition of ESC. A successful demonstration of the 300 mm size OTMS for the repaired parts enhanced the quality assurance with a temperature deviation of ±3.83 °C over 65 points of measurement.

We propose a wafer-type ion energy monitoring sensor (IEMS) that can measure the spatially resolved distribution of ion energy over the 150 mm plasma chamber for the in situ monitoring of the semiconductor fabrication process. The IEMS can directly be applied to the semiconductor chip production equipment without further modification of the automated wafer handling system. Thus, it can be adopted as an in situ data acquisition platform for plasma characterization inside the process chamber. To achieve ion energy measurement on the wafer-type sensor, the injected ion flux energy from the plasma sheath was converted into the induced currents on each electrode over the wafer-type sensor, and the generated currents from the ion injection were compared along the position of electrodes. The IEMS operates without problems in the plasma environment and has the same trends as the result predicted through the equation.