Domain Adaptation for Image Classification of Defects in Semiconductor Manufacturing

TL;DR

This paper explores domain adaptation techniques for image classification of semiconductor defects, introducing a CycleGAN-inspired model to improve performance in real-world electron microscope images, reducing labeling efforts.

Contribution

It proposes the DBACS approach, a novel CycleGAN-based model with enhanced loss functions, tailored for semi-supervised and unsupervised defect classification in semiconductor manufacturing.

Findings

DBACS outperforms baseline models in defect classification accuracy.

The approach reduces the need for extensive manual labeling.

Validated on real electron microscope images.

Abstract

In the semiconductor sector, due to high demand but also strong and increasing competition, time to market and quality are key factors in securing significant market share in various application areas. Thanks to the success of deep learning methods in recent years in the computer vision domain, Industry 4.0 and 5.0 applications, such as defect classification, have achieved remarkable success. In particular, Domain Adaptation (DA) has proven highly effective since it focuses on using the knowledge learned on a (source) domain to adapt and perform effectively on a different but related (target) domain. By improving robustness and scalability, DA minimizes the need for extensive manual re-labeling or re-training of models. This not only reduces computational and resource costs but also allows human experts to focus on high-value tasks. Therefore, we tested the efficacy of DA techniques in semi-supervised and unsupervised settings within the context of the semiconductor field. Moreover, we propose the DBACS approach, a CycleGAN-inspired model enhanced with additional loss terms to improve performance. All the approaches are studied and validated on real-world Electron Microscope images considering the unsupervised and semi-supervised settings, proving the usefulness of our method in advancing DA techniques for the semiconductor field.