A journal of IEEE and CAA , publishes high-quality papers in English on original theoretical/experimental research and development in all areas of automation
Volume 6 Issue 2
Mar.  2019

IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica

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Article Contents
Qinghua Zhu, Yan Qiao and Naiqi Wu, "Optimal Integrated Schedule of Entire Process of Dual-blade Multi-cluster Tools From Start-up to Close-down," IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 553-565, Mar. 2019. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2019.1911411
 Citation: Qinghua Zhu, Yan Qiao and Naiqi Wu, "Optimal Integrated Schedule of Entire Process of Dual-blade Multi-cluster Tools From Start-up to Close-down," IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 553-565, Mar. 2019.

# Optimal Integrated Schedule of Entire Process of Dual-blade Multi-cluster Tools From Start-up to Close-down

##### doi: 10.1109/JAS.2019.1911411
Funds:

National Natural Science Foundation of China 61673123

National Natural Science Foundation of China 61803397

the Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT) of Macau 106/2016/A3

the Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT) of Macau 005/2018/A1

the Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT) of Macau 011/2017/A

the Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT) of Macau 0017/2019/A1

• Multi-cluster tools are widely used in majority of wafer fabrication processes in semiconductor industry. Smaller lot production, thinner circuit width in wafers, larger wafer size, and maintenance have resulted in a large quantity of their start-up and close-down transient periods. Yet, most of existing efforts have been concentrated on scheduling their steady states. Different from such efforts, this work schedules their transient and steady-state periods subject to wafer residency constraints. It gives the schedulability conditions for the steady-state scheduling of dual-blade robotic multi-cluster tools and a corresponding algorithm for finding an optimal schedule. Based on the robot synchronization conditions, a linear program is proposed to figure out an optimal schedule for a start-up period, which ensures a tool to enter the desired optimal steady state. Another linear program is proposed to find an optimal schedule for a close-down period that evolves from the steady state period. Finally, industrial cases are presented to illustrate how the provided method outperforms the existing approach in terms of system throughput improvement.

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