After languishing in slow and negative growth areas for more than three years, Israel's economy in general — and its emerging semiconductor equipment industry in particular — are forecast to have solid gains when the figures for 2004 are compiled, according to Yair Ofek, deputy director general of the Israel Export & International Cooperation Institute. Speaking at a recent conference for the trade press, he attributed his country's recovery to economic and political stability, coupled with constant growth and the rapid development of technology and high-tech industries. He said that conflicts within Israel, well publicized by the media, have had no impact on the technological and economic growth of the industry.

"Investment in the Israeli semiconductor industry is affected by global factors rather than being affected by domestic events," said Carmel Vernia, chairman and CEO of Tower Semiconductor (Migdal Haemek). With more venture capital than any European country, Israel would be the third largest state in venture capital ranking, if it were a part of the United States.

"Startup companies are the emerging force in our economy," explained Ofek, who said the image of Israelis working in a socialist-styled kibbutz producing agricultural products was becoming passé. Israel is one of the largest world centers for start-up enterprises, with more than 1000 startups last year. "The innovative, technology-intensive atmosphere promotes growth and technology breakthroughs," he said, likening the concentration of the high-tech industry to Silicon Valley.

Why Israel?

Why are so many of the leading equipment manufacturers located in Israel? "Companies set up shop where their customers are and where their critical resources are," said Shlomo Caine, director of Intel Capital (Petach Tikva) With only four fabs in the country, proximity to the customers is not a critical reason, he noted.

In many ways, Israel looks like Silicon Valley to entrepreneurs. It's a very small but highly concentrated geographical region, with a high level of interaction between high-tech companies. Venture capital is readily available. There is extensive multinational involvement. And there are world-class financial institutions as well as academic institutions.

Why has Intel stayed for 30 years? "Execution," Caine said. "When push comes to shove, it's the results that count, the ability to make commitments. These are the real fundamentals of the 'can do' attitude."

From satellites to wafers

Many of Israel's metrology engineers began their careers working with satellite-based imaging systems, and have migrated to wafer inspection systems in parallel with the economy's transition from military to commercial applications of technology. Many of these engineers and the companies they've started are in the so-called "Optical Triangle," a small patch of land southeast of Tel Aviv centered around the Weizmann Institute of Science.

"If we can see small things from very far away, we can see much smaller things close up," said Gadi Neumann, managing director of Negevtech (Rehovot). He compared the difficulty of optical imaging in wafer inspection to trying to find a 2 mm imperfection in an area the size of a football field.

"E-beam inspection is not the answer," he said. "It is too slow and the resolution is not so good. The key to inspection today is image acquisition." Negevtech's 2-D Step&Image system uses short-pulsed UV illumination for either brightfield or darkfield illumination, and is designed to work with 65 nm technology.

Gad Yaron, general manager and COO of Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd. (Rehovoth), presented his company's vision of integrated metrology: packing the instrumentation into a small box that can be embedded in the machine, with the idea of making in situ measurements that don't delay the process. However, more complex 300 mm wafer technology still requires standalone equipment. Nova's latest development is a 200 mm optical CD tool that uses scatterometry techniques (Fig. 1).

Ofer Du Nour, chairman and CTO of Tevet (Yokneam), said the migration of metrology from the fab floor into the process tool has indeed become the key market driver. Integrated metrology captures the real-time process output parameters, which are used by control algorithms to provide feedback corrections to the input parameters. This is the basis of automated process control.

In contrast with Nova, Tevet's In-situ Thickness Measurement System (IsTMS) uses a large spot size (25 mm) Fourier transform spectral reflectometry to measure film thickness over various patterns (Fig. 2). The technique is insensitive to vibration and distance from the wafer (from as close as 2 mm and up to 500 mm away), and does not require auto focus or pattern recognition. By measuring multiple sites in parallel, a full wafer can be measured in less than one second.

Michael Babb is a freelance writer living in Swansea, UK. E-mail: michael.babb@intlworld.com