As the global semiconductor industry continues to advance toward 3 nm and beyond, optical inspection and metrology technologies have become ever more critical for ensuring chip manufacturing yield and performance. New architectures such as gate-all-around (GAA) transistors, 3D NAND, and 3D-IC heterogeneous integration are making internal chip structures unprecedentedly complex, imposing atomic-scale requirements on inspection sensitivity, accuracy, and throughput.

To meet these challenges, optical inspection is undergoing deep collaboration with artificial intelligence (AI), ushering in an intelligent new stage. Recent AI-powered optical inspection systems can now perform high-speed, high-precision measurements of high-aspect-ratio through-silicon vias (TSVs) with a minimum measurement aperture of 0.3 µm, providing critical support for advanced packaging. Meanwhile, novel techniques such as wavefront phase imaging (WFPI) have achieved single-shot, sub-nanometer-resolution, high-speed full-field topography measurement, significantly enhancing in-line process control. These advances are shifting the inspection paradigm from “defect detection” toward “prediction and root-cause analysis.”

Mordor Intelligence forecasts the global semiconductor metrology and inspection equipment market will reach $5.37 billion in 2026, while frontier applications continue to expand—optical inspection is now essential to the high reliability and performance demands of AI chips, automotive electronics, and Micro LEDs. On the afternoon of September 9, 2026, the “Optical Semiconductor Inspection Technology Forum” will convene industry experts and enterprise representatives to explore innovative AI–optics fusion inspection solutions and optical inspection technologies for advanced nodes and packaging, aiming to promote deep industry–academia–research integration and help the industry seize the core opportunity of inspection technology upgrades.