Colin G. Gordon and T. L. Dresner

The performance of optical tools used by the microelectronics industry is sensitive to their vibration and noise environments. Such environments result in internal tool vibrations that degrade tool performance. Relative vibrations between a tool and the workpiece on the order of only a few microinches per second can prevent the tool from successfully performing its task. Despite this, vendors often provide no specifications for allowable noise and vibration environments for their tools. In other cases, vendors provide allowable specifications that are incomplete, difficult to use, and/or hard to interpret for design-evaluation purposes. As a result, microelectronics facilities usually have to be designed very conservatively (and thus expensively) to assure acceptable tool performance.

In this paper, we recommend simple test procedures that both vendors and users can implement to obtain useful specifications for allowable environments.

Keywords: vibration, specifications, noise, criteria

Reprinted from Proceedings of International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE), Vol. 2264 (July 1994).