Identifying defects
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsMohammed F. Fayaz, Julie L. Lee, Leah M. Pastel, Maroun Kassab
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Identifying systematic defects in wafer processing including performing defect inspection of a plurality of wafers, identifying defects in each of the plurality of wafers as not being associated with a trivial and/or known root cause, determining a physical location on each wafer where each of the defects occurs and correlating the physical locations where each of the defects occurs with cell instances defined for those physical locations.
Claims18
A method for identifying systematic defects in wafer processing, comprising:
- performing defect inspection of a plurality of wafers;
- identifying defects in each of the plurality of wafers as not being associated with a trivial and/or known root cause;
- determining a physical location on each wafer where each of the defects occurs;
- and
- correlating the physical locations where each of the defects occurs with each one of different cell instances of a same cell respectively defined for those physical locations, the different cell instances having multiple rotational orientations in a hierarchical layout,
- the correlating comprising:
- normalizing the respective rotational orientations of the different cell instances into a single rotational orientation relative to layout geometry;
- and
- defect mapping to the different cell instances based on the single rotational orientation relative to the layout geometry,
- wherein the method is performed using a computer or a processor.
A method for identifying systematic defects in wafer processing, comprising:
- inputting defect data for a plurality of wafers into a processing unit of a computing device having a non-transitory computer readable medium on which executable instructions are stored, which, when executed, cause the processing unit to:
- analyze wafer level defect data to identify defects with trivial and/or known root causes,
- ascertain defect coordinates,
- translate defects coordinates to reticle and design coordinate spaces, and
- extract placement information for each one of different cell instances of a same cell of each reticle and design coordinate space, the different cell instances having multiple rotational orientations;
- normalize the respective rotational orientations of the different cell instances into a single rotational orientation;
- and
- defect map the defects to the different cell instances of the reticle and design coordinate spaces based on the single rotational orientation.
A method for identifying systematic defects in wafer processing comprising wafer based defect analysis, wafer-to-reticle defect stacking, reticle-to-design defect mapping and design-to-cells defect mapping,
- the design-to-cells defect mapping comprising:
- normalizing into a single rotational orientation respective rotational orientations of different cell instances of a same cell where occurrences of defects not associated with trivial and/or known root causes are located;
- and
- defect mapping the defects to the different cell instances based on the single rotational orientation,
- wherein the method is performed using a computer or a processor.
A system to identify systematic defects in wafer processing, comprising:
- a wafer inspection apparatus to inspect a plurality of wafers for defects and to generate defect data in accordance with results of the inspection;
- a networking unit coupled to the wafer inspection apparatus;
- and
- a computing device, coupled to the networking unit, to receive the defect data generated by the wafer inspection apparatus by way of the networking unit, the computing device including a processing unit and a non-transitory computer readable medium on which executable instructions are stored, which, when executed, cause the processing unit to identify defects in each of the plurality of wafers as not being associated with trivial and/or known root causes, to determine a physical location on each wafer where each of the defects occurs and to correlate the physical locations where each of the defects occurs with each one of different cell instances of a same cell respectively defined for those physical locations, the different cell instances having multiple rotational orientations, the correlation being executed by:
- a normalization of the respective rotational orientations of the different cell instances into a single rotational orientation;
- and
- a defect mapping to the different cell instances based on the single rotational orientation.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.