Apparatus and methods for determining critical area of semiconductor design data
First Claim
1. A method for determining a critical area of at least a portion of a design layout, the design layout comprising design shapes, the design shapes comprising design shapes artifacts, the method comprising:
- dividing the design layout into a plurality of points;
for each point, determining a critical radius corresponding to at least one defect type, wherein the determination is based on a plurality of distances between the each point and one or more neighboring design shape artifacts, without iteratively changing defect size or dimensions of the design shapes;
for each point, defining a probability of fail function based upon the critical radius; and
for each point, defining the probability of fail function to be equal to zero when a radius of a defect is smaller than the critical radius; and
for each point, defining the probability of fail function to be equal to one when the radius of the defect is larger than the critical radius.
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Abstract
Disclosed are mechanisms for efficiently and accurately calculating critical area. In general terms, a method for determining a critical area for a semiconductor design layout is disclosed. The critical area is utilizable to predict yield of a semiconductor device fabricated from such layout. A semiconductor design layout having a plurality of features is first provided. The features have a plurality of polygon shapes which include nonrectangular polygon shapes. Each feature shape has at least one attribute or artifact, such as a vertex or edge. A probability of fail function is calculated based on at least a distance between two feature shape attributes or artifacts. By way of example implementations, a distance between two neighboring feature edges (or vertices) or a distance between two feature edges (or vertices) of the same feature is first determined and then used to calculate the probability of fail function. In a specific aspect, the distances are first used to determine midlines between neighboring features or midlines within a same feature shape, and the midlines are then used to determine the probability of fail function. A critical area of the design layout is then determined based on the determined probability of fail function. In specific implementations, the defect type is a short type defect or an open type defect. In a preferred implementation, the features may have any suitable polygonal shape, as is typical in a design layout.
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Citations
8 Claims
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1. A method for determining a critical area of at least a portion of a design layout, the design layout comprising design shapes, the design shapes comprising design shapes artifacts, the method comprising:
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dividing the design layout into a plurality of points;
for each point, determining a critical radius corresponding to at least one defect type, wherein the determination is based on a plurality of distances between the each point and one or more neighboring design shape artifacts, without iteratively changing defect size or dimensions of the design shapes;
for each point, defining a probability of fail function based upon the critical radius; and
for each point, defining the probability of fail function to be equal to zero when a radius of a defect is smaller than the critical radius; and
for each point, defining the probability of fail function to be equal to one when the radius of the defect is larger than the critical radius. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5)
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6. A method for determining a critical area of at least a portion of a layout of a circuit pattern, the layout comprising a plurality of features having a plurality of attributes, the method comprising:
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first, selecting two attributes from the plurality of features;
second, determining a critical radius of the critical area based on the selected two attributes; and
based on the critical radius, determining the critical area in a non-iterative manner, wherein the operation of determining the critical area based upon the critical radius further comprises defining a probability of fail function based upon the critical radius, wherein for each point, the probability of fail function is defined to be equal to zero when a radius of a defect is smaller than the critical radius and defined to be equal to one when the radius of the defect is larger than the critical radius. - View Dependent Claims (7, 8)
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Specification