The Chemical Supply Chain – Emerging Challenges and Four Secrets to Success

In this article, I will explain major requirements for success for chemical supply chains, and why these four factors are key for enabling future Integrated Device Manufacturer (IDM) yield, reliability and output.

The IDM process and future product releases are largely dependent on the chemical supply chain robustness. The quantity and complexity of planned fab process improvements for yield and capacity do not provide any margin for error in quality and availability in the chemical supply chain. For the IDM to meet the market demands and execute the quality and reliability goals from their customers, the chemical supply chains must not induce interruptions or quality excursions which will only disrupt the global semiconductor supply chain.

1. Global supplier presence provides resilience for the end-user

Having supplier manufacturing and laboratory services geographically close to IDM facilities enables fast problem resolution and enhances communication. When critical problem-solving endeavors are underway between the supplier and the IDM, information and results sharing must occur multiple times per day instead of daily or longer. Often it is necessary for the IDM experts to interact with the supply chain contacts in real-time when conducting an experiment or a data collection endeavor.

2. Chemical suppliers must have qualified and diversified raw material sources

Supply chain resiliency for raw materials is essential for preventing the disruption of chemical supply and ensuring quality for the IDM customer. Raw material changes or outages can be one of the most disruptive activities to the manufacturing process, diverting IDM attention away from internal yield and reliability improvements, and forcing them into a reactive state of a process change that was not requested, nor planned.

How to achieve supply chain robustness?

a. Since long-term availability of any raw material source is uncertain, the suppliers should fully characterize and qualify several alternate sources of their raw materials in their early product development to avoid disruption to the IDM customers. Finished goods suppliers must apply the same level of scrutiny to raw materials as IDM customers do for finished goods.

b. The chemical supplier must have a deep level of understanding about the chemical parameters of their sub-suppliers. If the sub-supplier does not provide a CoA which includes all key parameters, raw material characterization and screening must be employed to ensure the shipping material will perform as expected – emphasizing the necessity of advanced metrology.

3. Supplier laboratory capability can resolve excursions

For a supplier to ensure the quality of the finished materials, it must have access to extremely comprehensive metrology, capable of measuring all the key parameters of the product with a high level of precision and repeatability. Access to advanced characterization methods also allows the supplier to address quality excursions and to develop iteratively improved products based on the IDM needs. Conversely, not having this capability on-site or readily available dramatically slows down the resolution of quality excursions and development activities.

4. CoAs must be robust and detailed

The Certificates of Analysis (CoA) provided by the chemical supplier to the IDM must be comprehensive and include all parameters which can impact the process. To enable the IDM experts to characterize their process against the inherent variability of the chemical product supply, the CoA must include precise and reliable measurements of all key parameters for every batch, including empirical measurements instead of calculated or estimated values. The correlations and process characterizations derived from the CoA values are crucial to reliability and continuous improvement of the process. Additionally, documenting the raw material lots used in the production of the finished goods is necessary to quickly identify the root cause for any excursion or variability in the IDM process.

The CoA provided to the IDM must be in electronic form that is easily accessible and can be quickly converted to raw data. As the IDMs manage countless measurements and variables in the wafer manufacturing process, the ability to create automated process correlation reports against the chemical CoA ensures reliability and yield. Timely availability of the CoA’s after the finished goods are produced is crucial for proactive supply chain management and mitigating potential process disruptions.

Respectfully,
Don Hadder Jr.
Intel Foundry – Planar Staff Engineer