KLA Tencor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| KLA-Tencor Corporation | |
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| Type | Public company |
| Founded | 1997 |
| Headquarters | San Jose, California |
| Key people | Edward W. (Ned) Barnholt, Chairman Richard P. (Rick) Wallace, CEO John Kispert, President and COO |
| Industry | SemiconductorEquipment & Materials |
| Products | Inline Wafer Defect Monitoring; Reticle and Photomask Defect Inspection; Critical Dimension (CD) Metrology; Wafer Overlay; Film and Surface Measurement, and overall Yield and Fab-wide Data Analysis. |
| Revenue | ▲$2.731 billion USD (2007) |
| Operating income | ▲$589.87 million USD (2007) |
| Net income | ▲$526.73 million USD (2007) |
| Employees | 5,000 (2007) |
| Website | www.kla-tencor.com |
KLA-Tencor Corporation (NASDAQ: KLAC) is a supplier of metrology and inspection tools for IC manufacturers. The company has a comprehensive portfolio of products designed to help manufacturers improve yield -- the fraction of chips that function properly.
The fabrication of an IC, or “chip,” is accomplished by depositing a series of film layers upon a silicon wafer that act as conductors, semiconductors or insulators. Numerous other process steps create circuit patterns, remove portions of the film layers, and perform other functions such as heat treatment. The role played by KLA-Tencor's products is to monitor the results of these steps to allow the manufacturer to control them. KLA-Tencor’s product portfolio can be broadly categorized into four groups: Defect Inspection, Metrology, Services and Software.
Defect Inspection
- Patterned and unpatterned wafer inspection (optical and electron beam)
- Defect analysis software
- Defect classification software
Photomask Inspection
- Pattern
- Contamination
Metrology:
- Optical overlay measurement
- Film thickness measurement
- Film stress measurement
- Critical dimension (geometry of the finest structures)
- Surface profiling
- Compositional measurement
- Resistivity measurement
Process Control Services
- Fab-wide yield management software
- Process control
KLA-Tencor has developed several fundamental techniques for semiconductor inspection and metrology. For example, the company has patented the idea of using a curved reflector to focus light onto a sample.[1]
