A real-time scheduling approach for two-cluster tools with wafer revisiting

IF 4.6 2区计算机科学 Q1 AUTOMATION & CONTROL SYSTEMS

Control Engineering Practice Pub Date : 2025-08-25 DOI:10.1016/j.conengprac.2025.106547

Genghong Wang , Naiqi Wu , Yan Qiao

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

In semiconductor manufacturing, there are revisiting processes where some processing steps are required to be visited by a wafer for multiple times. In many cases, the production of such revisiting processes is implemented in a multi-cluster tool composed of multiple individual cluster tools. Due to the complex wafer flow patterns and the coordination requirement of multiple robots, it is very challenging to schedule such a tool and there is no research report on this issue. This work deals with the scheduling problem of a two-cluster tool with wafer revisiting. To cope with the huge system state space, a simulation-based method is proposed. Based on this method, a real-time scheduling approach is proposed to efficiently find a good feasible solution. To implement the system simulation, a simulation model is developed based on object-oriented programming, and it can describe various wafer flow patterns and varied tool configurations. Furthermore, in this way, a schedule by optimally configuring process modules (PMs) for the operations can be efficiently found. Experiments are presented to demonstrate the proposed approach.

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具有晶圆重访功能的双集群工具实时调度方法

在半导体制造中，存在重访过程，其中一些处理步骤需要被晶圆多次访问。在许多情况下，这种重访过程的生成是在由多个单独的集群工具组成的多集群工具中实现的。由于复杂的晶圆流动模式和多个机器人的协调要求，这类工具的调度非常具有挑战性，目前还没有相关的研究报告。本文研究了具有晶圆重访的双集群工具的调度问题。为了应对庞大的系统状态空间，提出了一种基于仿真的方法。在此基础上，提出了一种实时调度方法，以有效地找到较好的可行解。为了实现系统仿真，基于面向对象编程建立了仿真模型，该模型能够描述各种晶圆流动模式和各种刀具配置。此外，通过这种方式，通过优化配置操作的过程模块（pm），可以有效地找到一个时间表。实验证明了所提出的方法。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Control Engineering Practice 工程技术-工程：电子与电气

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

12.20%

发文量

183

审稿时长

44 days

期刊介绍： Control Engineering Practice strives to meet the needs of industrial practitioners and industrially related academics and researchers. It publishes papers which illustrate the direct application of control theory and its supporting tools in all possible areas of automation. As a result, the journal only contains papers which can be considered to have made significant contributions to the application of advanced control techniques. It is normally expected that practical results should be included, but where simulation only studies are available, it is necessary to demonstrate that the simulation model is representative of a genuine application. Strictly theoretical papers will find a more appropriate home in Control Engineering Practice''s sister publication, Automatica. It is also expected that papers are innovative with respect to the state of the art and are sufficiently detailed for a reader to be able to duplicate the main results of the paper (supplementary material, including datasets, tables, code and any relevant interactive material can be made available and downloaded from the website). The benefits of the presented methods must be made very clear and the new techniques must be compared and contrasted with results obtained using existing methods. Moreover, a thorough analysis of failures that may happen in the design process and implementation can also be part of the paper. The scope of Control Engineering Practice matches the activities of IFAC. Papers demonstrating the contribution of automation and control in improving the performance, quality, productivity, sustainability, resource and energy efficiency, and the manageability of systems and processes for the benefit of mankind and are relevant to industrial practitioners are most welcome.