Professor leads semiconductor manufacturing technology

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) industrial and systems engineering professor Lee Tae-eog is at work in his office at KAIST in Daejeon in this file photo. / Courtesy of KAIST

By Yoon Sung-won

As semiconductor technology advances, the manufacturing of semiconductors using wafers has become a process more complex, sophisticated and automated that only robots can do without error.

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) industrial and systems engineering professor Lee Tae-eog has led the development of a scheduling technology that can accurately control the automation process of semiconductor manufacturing.

Lee, who was chosen by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning as the scientist of the month in December, has changed the way engineers do this work based on their long-accumulated “sense.”

“In the past, engineers sought for exact control in timing based on their experiences from numerous instances of trial and error,” Lee said. “In manufacturing wafers, effective management is essential in semiconductor production. But companies that actually produce semiconductors at factories barely solve the management problem despite both the industrial and academic sectors having acknowledged it.”

Semiconductors nowadays are produced by handling 10-nanometer-thick wafers through about 500 processes. Lee stressed that an accurate scheduling technology is crucial as about 80 percent of the manufacturing process is done in an automated robotics system.

“With the scheduler, manufacturers may reduce product defects and boost the yield rate by at least 20 percent,” he said.

After studying at Seoul National University, Lee acquired his master’s degree at KAIST and his PhD at The Ohio State University. The professor started teaching at the KAIST’s industrial and systems engineering department in 1991.

Lee said the development of the advanced process scheduler started as an academic-industrial collaboration. He began working on the scheduler in 2000 at the request of a local semiconductor company Jusung Engineering’s. After three years, the professor developed the first domestic scheduler, which later became the basis for the one he recently developed.

The professor said he plans to focus on developing standardized scheduling technology that can actually be applied to the industry under cooperation with domestic companies.