Semiconductors

6 Semiconductors: Integrated Circuit Design for Manufacturability

Although in contrast to IC DfM, ME DfM is often not based on a set of

checkable rules, there can be a commonality between ME and IC DfM to

drive cost reduction (Figure1.1) (e.g., the number of defects). The x-axis in

Figure 1.1 corresponds to a technical parameter that drives down the pro-

duct cost. Device scaling was originally introduced to reduce the impact of

particle contamination; smaller devices resulted in smaller product dice and

higher yield at a xed number of random point defects per wafer. However,

improvements in particle yield were offset by the degradation i