Design of microelectronic process flows

Citation

Rigelsford, J. (2002), "Design of microelectronic process flows", Assembly Automation, Vol. 22 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/aa.2002.03322cad.011

Design of microelectronic process flows

Keywords: Microelectronics industry, Texas Instruments Inc., Patents

Applicant: Texas Instruments Inc., USAPatent number: US6,311,096Publication date: 30 October 2001Title: Design of Microelectronic Process Flows for Manufacturability and Performance

This patent describes a method for improving device design and process flow design in the fabrication of semiconductor devices. It provides a method for simultaneously optimising and trading off manufacturability, performance and reliability criteria during device and process flow design and performing these functions online or offline.

The method can minimise the impact of manufacturing variations on semiconductor manufacturing by statistical design which seeks to reduce the impact of variability on device behaviour. It is based on a Markov representation of a process flow which captures the sequential and stochastic nature of microelectronics manufacturing and enables the separation of device and process models, statistical modelling of process modules from observable wafer states and approximations for statistical optimisation over large design spaces. The statistical estimation component of this method results in extremely accurate predictions of the variability of transistor performance for all of the fabricated flows. The statistical design can reduce parametric yield loss which occurs when functioning devices do not meet performance or reliability specifications. Parametric yield loss is caused by processing variations during manufacturing. Statistical optimisation results in devices that achieve all transistor performance and reliability goals and reduces the variability of key transistor performances.