Dr. Yi-Ching Lin had a very compelling and exemplary career in bringing up semiconductor manufacturing technologies throughout the industry in eight companies including TI, Intel, TSMC, etc. His ability at diagnosing and solving yield problems has made a major impact on the industry. He has worked on microprocessor and chipsets, flash memory, CMOS ePAL, logic products with embedded DRAM, among others.

The methodologies that he developed for identifying different classes of particles and defects in inspection and strategies for tracing them back to different pieces of equipment are an inspiration. Some best practices for efficiently reducing particles and defects would follow these steps. Designers and process engineers work together on layout rules to minimize film peeling and pattern liftoff defects. In particular, they need to consider the impact of wafer clamping and film coverage on the die seal ring, scribe lines, and wafer edge. Deducing whether defects are from printing anomalies, scratches, or foreign particles can be determined through in-line optical and SEM inspection. If necessary, Auger analysis can further identify the composition of particles. Finally, electrical tests of comb and serpentine structures are used to detect foreign particles (short) and line cracking defects (open). Combining these data to generate wafer maps of particle footprints traces back to the problematic equipment.

Transferring technology to a new fab can have unexpected problems despite equipment of the same model and vendor. For three months, his team fought a metal residual problem on wafers processed in a new fab. An etcher was suspected to cause damage to the metal surface that led to the metal residual. Only upon comparing splits in etchers across fabs could they identify the root cause. They learned the old etcher was well-seasoned from two years of dielectric etching, which the new etcher still required.

Transferring technology to a new fab can have unexpected problems despite equipment of the same model and vendor. For three months, his team fought a metal residual problem on wafers processed in a new fab. An etcher was suspected to cause damage to the metal surface that led to the metal residual. Only upon comparing splits in etchers across fabs could they identify the root cause. They learned the old etcher was well-seasoned from two years of dielectric etching, which the new etcher still required.

In addition, Yi-Ching's work ethic as a Berkeley PhD student of the generation of a "keeper" viewgraph of new results each week is cited as goal for the PhD students who have followed him. Today Dr. Lin clearly has an overall feeling of satisfaction from the demanding hours of his very challenging career.