Mitigation of Electro Magnetic Interference by Using C-Shaped Composite Cylindrical Device

Abstract

The extremely low-frequency (ELF) and its corresponding electromagnetic field influences the yield of CMOS processes in the foundry, especially for high-end equipment such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) systems, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) systems, focused ion beam (FIB) systems, and electron beam lithography (E-Beam) systems. There are several techniques to mitigate electromagnetic interference (EMI), among which active shielding systems and passive shielding methods are widely used. An active shielding system is used to generate an internal electromagnetic field to reduce the detected external electromagnetic field in electric coils with the help of the current. Although the active shielding system reduces the EMI impact, it induces an internal electromagnetic field that could affect the function of nearby tools and/or high-performance probes. Therefore, in this study, we have used a C-shaped cylindrical device combined with an active shielding system and passive shielding techniques to reduce EMI for online monitoring and to overcome the aforementioned issues. In this study, the active shielding system was wrapped with a permalloy composite material (i.e., a composite of nickel and iron alloy) as a tubular device. A C-shaped opening was made on the tubular structure vertically or horizontally to guide the propagation of the electromagnetic field. This C-shaped cylindrical device further reduced electromagnetic noise up to −5.06 dB and redirected the electromagnetic field toward the opening direction on the cylindrical device. The results demonstrated a practical reduction of the electromagnetic field.