A Review and Analysis of Automatic Optical Inspection and Quality Monitoring Methods in Electronics Industry

Abstract

Electronics industry is one of the fastest evolving, innovative, and most competitive industries. In order to meet the high consumption demands on electronics components, quality standards of the products must be well-maintained. Automatic optical inspection (AOI) is one of the non-destructive techniques used in quality inspection of various products. This technique is considered robust and can replace human inspectors who are subjected to dull and fatigue in performing inspection tasks. A fully automated optical inspection system consists of hardware and software setups. Hardware setup include image sensor and illumination settings and is responsible to acquire the digital image, while the software part implements an inspection algorithm to extract the features of the acquired images and classify them into defected and non-defected based on the user requirements. A sorting mechanism can be used to separate the defective products from the good ones. This article provides a comprehensive review of the various AOI systems used in electronics, microelectronics , and opto-electronics industries. In this review the defects of the commonly inspected electronic components, such as semiconductor wafers, flat panel displays, printed circuit boards and light emitting diodes, are first explained. Hardware setups used in acquiring images are then discussed in terms of the camera and lighting source selection and configuration. The inspection algorithms used for detecting the defects in the electronic components are discussed in terms of the preprocessing, feature extraction and classification tools used for this purpose. Recent articles that used deep learning algorithms are also reviewed. The article concludes by highlighting the current trends and possible future research directions.

Review of THz-based semiconductor assurance

“…PCB inspection and FA are primarily performed to ensure proper connectivity of all components, detect inclusions, and functionally test the integrated system. This is primarily performed through electrical or in-circuit (bed-of nails and JTAG), 104 optical (automated optical inspection, AOI), 105 and volumetric methods (automated x-ray inspection). [106][107][108] These methods in combination enable a system of defect detection and mitigation in real time throughout production, assembly, and final testing.…”

A Simple, Precise, and High-Speed Die Edge Detection Framework for the Semiconductor Industry

“…In a real manufacturing production line, the imaging environment and lighting configuration can substantially affect the accuracy of die edge detection [3,23]. Figure 3 shows the architecture and hardware setup of the proposed AOI system.…”

“…Defective products are proven to impinge the manufacturing process and increase cost in general [1]. An automated optical inspection (AOI) system is a non-destructive approach that is widely implemented in the semiconductor industry typically for quality assurance purposes [2,3]. Die edge detection is the first and most fundamental step in defects detection and dies coordination in an AOI system.…”

“…It is worthwhile to remark that the template matching method [15] is of the most common methods implemented in the semiconductor industry for edge detection purposes [3,[16][17][18][19]. The template matching method can locate the edge of an object [20].…”

Experimental Studies of Conductive Paths of Printed Circuit Boards by Using Subminiature Eddy Current Transducers

“…These challenges require to change the process parameters accordingly. All of these changes (whether they are sudden or longterm) cause defective products, and therefore quality assurance and process improvement is very essential in electronics industry [6].…”