SRC Summer 1996 Continuous Quality Improvement

In May of 1996, the Engineering Research Center for Advanced Electronic Materials Processing (ERC for AEMP) at North Carolina State University (NCSU) received funding from the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) to pursue what is called the SRC Summer '96 Continuous Quality Improvement Initiative. As a result of this situation, three graduate students were selected to participate in the project and a number of researchers from the ERC-AEMP were brought on board to support the effort. The objective of the project was to continuously improve the quality of an in situ gate-stack process for the across-stage fabrication of MOS capacitors. The research pathways to achieve this objective were process characterization as well as definition, materials analysis and statistical analysis. This paper will discuss the key issues in this effort.