Telepresence Microscopy: An Application of State of the Art Internet-Based Technology to Long Distance Scientific Endeavors. Long Distance Can Refer to Around The World, Across the Country, or From One Site Within a Company to Another

At the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a Commerce Department Agency in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Dr. Michael Postek is the Nano-Scale metrology group leader. Part of his work is devoted to advancing a concept known as TPM (TelePresence Microscopy).

"What we are trying to do is bring experts from across the country together in a collaboratory type application using Internet technology". NIST and Argonne National Laboratories in conjunction with the University of Illinois have joined together in order to improve this technology and to develop it. Develop standards for the technology. To develop mechanisms, programs and other applications which will allow this technology to go forward.

In the Material Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois, Dr. Nester Zaluzec is co-project leader on the materials micro-characterization collaboratory, a pilot effort within the US Depart of Energy DOE2000 Project.

The MMC and telepresence microscopy in general is more than just simple remote microscopy. What we are really doing here is creating a virtual on-line electronic laboratory. In that laboratory we are integrating resources for scientific research. And those resources are the expertise of people, instrumentation and data. All of which are trying to define a new paradigm in experimental science.

At Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas, Marylyn Bennett is a technical staff member. Texas Instruments, a large distributive manufacturing company has research in fabrication facilities called FABS around the world. Modern semi-conductor FABS cost a billion dollars to build. That includes the building itself, all the facilities, all the expensive equipment that goes into the FAB. So we want to make sure that equipment and that facility is utilized to its fullest to where we make the cleanest wafers and get the best good wafers out the door for our customers.

Marylyn Bennett, Nester Zaluzec, and Mike Postek work hundreds of miles apart. TelePresence Microscopy makes those miles disappear by creating a virtual space, a co-laboratory, in which they can meet without leaving home-base to deal with industrial problems.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology functions, among other things, to make American industry more competitive on a global scale. Seeking methods to improve length-metrology is one of the ways NIST does that. In the Precision Engineering Division under the office of the National Advanced Manufacturing Testbed, the successful development of a colaboratory for telepresence microscopy provides an important new tool to promote technology transfer in the areas of length-metrology and measurement technology. Often that area is home to things very small. Things so tiny that they can be seen and measured only through the powers of sophisticated instruments like scanning, transmission and analytical electron microscopes. This is the world of the microscopic; microscopic machines, microscopic tools. It is also the world of semi-conductors where delicate wafers and devices are profoundly susceptible to contaminates well beyond the ability of the naked eye to detect.

Particles of the bane on the semi-conductor process engineers work very hard in the FAB to keep particles contamination, pattern defects, any kind of anomaly. so that we produce as many good wafers as possible. In the FAB, to promote contamination free manufacturing, humans are completely enclosed from head to toe in what we call bunny suits or jump suits, and very little human interaction with the wafers. We typically use avacuum pencil or robot arm to transport the wafers, or even little carts and moving trains that transport the wafers from machine to machine and tool to tool. All the wafer handling inside the tool is done robotically, and that is one of the ways we insure the least amount of human intervention and the cleanest process wafers as possible.

Despite precautions, contamination happens. When it does, process engineers go to work seeking to identify the contaminate and eliminate the cause. For Texas Instruments, the faster this is done, the better. That is why the semiconductor industry seeks outside expertise. The kind TPM can deliver with remarkable ease.

"Good morning, Mike, this is Marylyn at Texas Instruments…." (Marylyn)

"How are you doing?" (Mike)

" I am doing fine, is Nester on line?" (Marylyn)

"Nester are you there?" (Mike)

"I'm here, too, Marylyn" (Nester)

"Marylyn, I have the wafer piece in the SEM right now, and I believe Nester

has some isolated particles" (Mike)

"Right, Marylyn, what I have done, I have taken some particles off the

surface of it and put it in my instrument, so we will be looking at

something similar" (Nester)

What we are doing here is taking a sample that was sent to us from Texas Instruments and we are analyzing it in our high resolution-scanning electron microscope. We are doing x-ray microanalysis of particles or flakes which we find on that sample.

We are also simultaneously analyzing it at Argonne National Laboratory in a high resolution analytical electron microscope in order to get answers to the questions as to what could be causing a production problem in this current situation.

"It is a very large peak, relatively speaking, so it looks like this material

is composed of tungsten. Is it?" (Nester)

If there is a contamination problem in the FAB and I am the process engineer, telepresence microscopy gives the advantage to me that I can take control of both of the analytical microscopes at Mike's lab and at Nester's lab. I can then drive to the exact location, where I know the contamination event occurred. I'll know the structure, I know the process so that I can see the spectra and see what is typical for that process. What should be there and what should not.

"Ok, I am on the Argonne sight now" (Marylyn)

"What you are looking at is a similar silicon particle that I found.

It is mainly silicon but if you look at the size of it, it is much smaller

than things that Mike was looking at. But we see on the very edge,

there's a real tiny particle" (Nester)

The advanced analytical microscope that we have here at Argonne is the most unique instrument in the world. It produces extremely small focused electron probes which can analyze not only sub-micron, but sub-nanometer particles. So it is particularly well suited to doing very small analysis at very high resolution. It also is a unique instrument in that it is fully integrated into computer control and it is fully integrated into the Internet. So anybody from anywhere in the world with just a desktop computer can log in, and not only watch what is happening, but given the appropriate passwords and the restrictions can participate in the experiment on line.

"Well, this looks a lot different than what Mike saw" (Nester)

"A lot more peaks this time" (Mike)

"Oh, there's a bunch of peaks. Oh, yeah, lots. Nester, can you tell me

what they are?" (Marylyn)

"This is sitting on a copper grid in a carbon film, so one peak is copper.

Let's eliminate that. But what I see is really strange is chrome, iron

and nickel" (Nester)

"They found chrome, iron and nickel in that small particle" (Mike)

"Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, chrome, nickel and iron. No. that is not

a good thing,. That's components of stainless steel. So that means

means we have a really dirty tool in there." (Marylyn)

Telepresence microscopy allows us to use the expertise of our universities and national labs. And using telepresence microscopy is a very good collaborating effort and a very cost effective way for industry, university and national labs to perform together. TPM provides us with an ability to reduce the time and space paradigm that is out there. We now can interact almost instantaneously across the country.

"Very good, Marylyn. We will be sending you some of the xray maps. If you

look on the screen right now you will see some" (Nester)

"Oh, I see now. Is that a dot map? Oh, that was great! Ok, terrific.

Thanks again for your help. Ok, thanks, bye" (Nester)

The job is not over. The work Marylyn, Nester and Mike have done in identifying the contaminant will be turned over to Texas Instruments process engineers who will then have to eliminate it and its causes. Beyond the specifics of this particular case, impressive as they are, is the fact that telepresence takes information transfer and problem solving to a whole new level, an interactive and responsive one with applications that is virtually endless. It makes expertise and instrumentation available without time consuming and costly travel. In other words, you don't have to be there.

Now that we have our contamination problem solved, its very easy to sit back and see the advantage of being so close to the expertise of Mike and Nester through use of the Internet. Again, that is expertise that we may or may not have here at Texas Instruments. Going over the Internet is very fast and it is much more cost effective than doing it ourselves here.

In the future this will become commonplace. This will be something that everyone will have to have on their desks and in their homes. Education will be benefited by this to a great extent. Ability to get students in rural areas access to laboratories such as this will become very commonplace.

In five years time, you will be there in telepresence. You will be immersed in this environment. Maybe, it might be a set of goggles you put on instead of looking at a flat screen; where we are controlling a knob instead of pushing buttons on a screen with your fingertip. You might have an inner-active environment where you have onscreen gloves so you can feel the instrument move; you can hear, you have to actually sense the presence of what is there. And that is only the first step.

It would be difficult to imagine any industry that would not be able to use this technology to some extend sometime in the near future.