ASML corporate fellow Arie den Boef is the driving force behind Yieldstar, a metrology instrument that’s indispensable in advanced chip manufacturing. He talks about a quarter century of Yieldstar and the joy and challenges of research and development in close collaboration with customers.
It was around the turn of the millennium that Martin van den Brink sent an email to his engineers. He’d just returned from a trip to the US, where he’d heard about an optical metrology technique that could reveal the condition of exposed structures in the photoresist on wafers. “Why don’t we have this at ASML?” Van den Brink asked.
That was the moment Arie den Boef raised his hand. He’d already been working for several years on improving the alignment sensor. These sensors determine the position of the silicon wafer in a scanner, but Den Boef had also been developing a method to extract much more information from optical measurements of the grating-like structures, called markers.
This was the start of a remarkable development. Den Boef became the driving force behind Yieldstar, an instrument now indispensable in modern chip manufacturing. Bits&Chips spoke with him about his journey of discovery.
This interview can be watched on Youtube and listened to on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
