Fast and accurate automatic wafer defect detection and classification using machine learning based SEM image analysis

Performing accurate and timely Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) image analysis to identify wafer defects is crucial as it directly impacts manufacturing yield. In this paper, a machine learning (ML) based approach for analyzing SEM images (from wafer inspection machines) to locate and classify wafer defects is proposed. A state-of-the-art one-stage objection detection model called YOLOv8 (You Only Look Once version 8) is used as it offers a good balance between accuracy and inference speed. Experimental results confirm that an ensemble model composed of multiple YOLOv8 models can predict 6 types of defects with a mean Average Precision (mAP) of 0.789 (at IoU=0.5) for unseen test data consisting of real-world SEM images from 5 wafer fabs that have varying image qualities.