There is Moore's Law. It is a prediction that semiconductor performance will double every two years. Humanity has been challenging to make semiconductors more detailed and faster. Samsung succeeded in mass production of 7nm process chips earlier this year. 1 nm is the unit of dividing 1 m by 1 billion. That is the equivalent of dividing a single hair into 10,000 strands.

This makes the semiconductor circuit line width narrower. The already complicated process becomes more complicated. The more detailed it is, the more vulnerable it is to contamination. However, 'yield' is a core value that cannot be overlooked.

10~30% of the yield loss during the actual process is caused by 'slight contamination that is invisible to the eye'. In the 'ultra-fine process', the 'ultra-trace detection' technology must also follow.

It is not as simple as it sounds. After manufacturing a wafer, semiconductors repeat processes such as oxidation, photo, etching, and metal wiring more than 600 times, but the process cannot be stopped in the middle. In this process, it is impossible to know whether defects are occurring due to wafer contamination. For this reason, sometimes samples are analyzed late.

A semiconductor equipment manufacturer, NvisANA has developed a solution that can prevent the problems in the semiconductor process. In 2015, NvisANA developed the world's first equipment 'M-SPEC' that can monitor metallic contamination on the wafer surface in real time.

There are several reasons why this equipment is evaluated as a 'hidden champion' of the next-generation semiconductor industry. This is because the existing pollution assessment method is converted to 'real-time'. The inspection time has also been greatly reduced. It reduced from 24 hours up to a week to just 20 minutes. The detection level was also raised to 1PPT. This is the first in the  industry. 1PTT is 'one trillionth'. It is the world's most sensitive real-time measurement technology. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which rank first and second in the world of memory semiconductors, are also using this product.

An official from NvisANA said, "This equipment can contribute to the fine processing of the domestic semiconductor industry and improvement of production yield. Based on this equipment, we will make efforts to further expand overseas exports."