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Process monitoring in the manufacture of semiconductors

Don´t Waste your Wafers
To minimize losses from defective processing, Brankamp developed a new process monitoring solution to monitor the “back-end” trim process. Typical problems which occur during the trim process include:
  • broken tooling (1)
  • chipped packaging (2)
  • solder on the lead frame (3)
  • mis-placed semiconductors (4)
  • compound bleed from molding process
  • slug/scrap returns


If these faults occur, the component must be scrapped. Process monitoring aims to detect these faults. Additionally, as the monitoring is “In-Process”, immediate feedback on the process stability can be given to the operator, allowing adjustments to be made, which in turn lead to improvements in productivity.

Example of an acoustic emission curve
detecting fault during triming
The principle of process monitoring:

Example of a Brankamp installation of a PK 500 system on a Fico trim press. Two Acoustic Emission Sensors were simply bolted onto the tooling and the signals were split into three channels. This approach allowed General Semiconductor to successfully detect all of the common faults listed. After some tuning, it was even possible to detect a chip to a single component on a frame containing 192 components.
When a fault is detected, the frame is diverted for manual checking, greatly reducing the amount of human intervention required.
“The Brankamp system has been even more successful in detecting faults than we had hoped. We have been able to use it to improve not only the trim process but also the prior processes such as molding. The ability to see into the process is very beneficial. We have now ordered a second system for fitting to a Han-Mi machine.”

Edward Ross
Manufacturing Engineer
at General Semiconductor

 “This is a very exciting new monitoring application for Brankamp. We have previously done some work detecting collisions in the “front-end” robotic handling of wafers, but had ever looked at the “back-end”. It is our belief that this process can be applied to the packaging of any plastic encapsulated semiconductor.”
The benefits of using our systems:
  • 100% in-process checking
  • Tooling breakage detection leads to reducted scrap levels
  • Reduction in manual inspection
  • Early indication of problems
  • Process visibility
  • Faults sorted or marked for manual checking
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