A Momentum Contrastive Learning Framework for Low-Data Wafer Defect Classification in Semiconductor Manufacturing

Wafer bin maps (WBMs) are essential test data in semiconductor manufacturing. WBM defect classification can provide critical information for the improvement of manufacturing processes and yield. Although deep-learning-based automatic defect classification models have demonstrated promising results in recent years, they require a substantial amount of labeled data for training, and manual labeling is time-consuming. Such limitations impede the practical application of existing algorithms. This study introduces a low-data defect classification algorithm based on contrastive learning. By employing momentum contrastive learning, the network extracts effective representations from large-scale unlabeled WBMs. Subsequently, a prototypical network is utilized for fine-tuning with only a minimal amount of labeled data to achieve low-data classification. Experimental results reveal that the momentum contrastive learning method improves the defect classification performance by learning feature representation from large-scale unlabeled data. The proposed method attains satisfactory classification accuracy using a limited amount of labeled data and surpasses other comparative methods in performance. This approach allows for the exploitation of information derived from large-scale unlabeled data, significantly reducing the reliance on labeled data.