Apparatus for inspecting wafer surface, method for inspecting wafer surface, apparatus for judging defective wafer, method for judging defective wafer, and apparatus for processing information on wafer surface

Abstract

It is possible to inspect scratches and staining on a wafer surface on the basis of an LPD map obtained from a particle counter, by providing a meansfor detecting aggregation of clustered point defects (LPD) from two-dimensional distribution informationfor such fine LPD on the surface of a silicon wafer, and an improvement in the inspection efficiency and the precision of judgements of 'defective' status can be achieved. Furthermore, the system is devised so that the trend of generation of scratches and staining in a specified process can easily be detected by accumulating wafer surface information such as scratch information, staining information and the like for the wafer surface detected by a wafer surface inspection device(especially as image information or numerical information), and superposing sets of information thus accumulated. Plans for improving processes can be made by both the wafer supplier and wafer consumer by sharing such information with both parties.