300mm semiconductor manufacturing requires pervasive and cost effective material handling solutions to avoid the ergonomic problems associated with manual handling of the heavy and awkward 300mm wafer lots. Driving and employing industry standards, along with a lot of hard work on the part of Intel engineers and those of our suppliers, has allowed us to bring each of our 300mm fabs online with 100% automated material handling. Automated storage and retrieval systems store hundreds of carriers up to 20 feet above the clean room floor. The interbay monorails linking these ASRS units move the wafers from one area of the fab to another at nearly 100m per minute, while the overhead intrabay hoist vehicles bring the wafers directly to the tool load port without interfering with the technicians working in the bays.

Solving the basic material handling problem, is just the first step, however. Fully automating the fab introduces both new problems and new opportunities. On one hand, development engineers no longer have ready access to wafer wands for ad-hoc lot splitting or wafer inspections, and lot delivery times are no longer in their direct control. On the other hand, the introduction of sophisticated control software for scheduling and processing material at the tools, radio frequency identification tags on the carriers, and advanced command centers will allow us to shift semiconductor manufacturing from the manually intensive activity that it is today to a more seamless, or "lights out" activity. Thus, our challenge is to design systems which can enhance the technology development process as well as the manufacturing process.

Wayne Carriker is a Principal Automation Engineer with Logic Technology Development in Hillsboro, Oregon. He joined Intel in 1995 working in the area of factory automation and material handling systems. From 1996 to 2000, his focus was factory operations and the systems changes required to support the conversion from 200mm to 300mm manufacturing, and he led the design and implementation of the automated material handling system for Intel's first 300mm facility. More recently, he completed the startup of the automation systems in Intel's newest technology development factory and now manages the material handling group responsible for developing new capabilities for Intel's 65nm process technology and beyond. He received his B.S. in Engineering Science from Trinity University in 1988 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989 and 1995.

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