On linewidth-based yield analysis for nanometer lithography

— Lithographic variability and its impact on printability is a major concern in today’s semiconductor manufacturing process. To address sub-wavelength printability, a number of resolution enhancement techniques (RET) have been used. While RET techniques allow printing of sub-wavelength features, the feature width itself becomes highly sensitive to process parameters, which in turn detracts from yield due to small perturbations in manufacturing parameters. Yield loss is a function of random variables such as depth-of-focus and exposure dose. In this paper, we present a first order canonical dose/focus model that takes into account both the correlated and independent randomness of the effects of lithographic variation. A novel tile-based yield estimation technique for a given layout, based on a statistical model for process variability is presented. Another novel contribution of this paper is the computation of global and local line-yield probabilities. The key issues addressed in th...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: DATE
• Authors: Aswin Sreedhar, Sandip Kundu
• Keywords: DATE 2009, Exposure Dose, Hardware, Tile-based Yield Estimation, Yield Estimation