Defect detection of IC wafer based on two-dimension wavelet transform

Defect detection of integrated circuit (IC) wafer based on two-dimension wavelet transform (2-D DWT) is presented in this paper. By utilizing the characteristics many of the same chips in a wafer, three images with defects located in the same position and different chips are obtained. The defect images contain the standard image without any defects. 2-D DWT presented in the paper can extract the standard image from the three defect images. The algorithm complexity of the method is close to that of 2-D DWT. After obtaining the standard image, the speed and accuracy of defects detection can be greatly enhanced using the detection method presented in the paper. Using the image gray-scale matching technology, impact of illumination on IC defect detection is solved. Experiments demonstrate that 2-D DWT is fast and accurate to defects detection in an IC image, and the method has high robustness for illumination. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.