In semiconductor manufacturing, intellectual property (IP) cores/blocks play a dominant role in modern chip design. The driving factor for IP usage is the time-to-market benefit delivered through design reuse. Today, IP blocks include the entire range of modules, ranging from standard cells, memories, and I/O devices to CPUs. Chip designers need complex IP blocks because modern levels of integration allow chips to be a complete system on chip (SOC), not just components of systems. However, as chips become more complex, IP blocks are subject to more interactions from multiple neighboring modules in the chip. Current IP block quality assurance (QA) flows focus mainly on functional verification, performance verification, and design rule checking (DRC). The standard DRC deck checks for minimum and maximum density rules within the IP block. However, when an IP is placed in an SOC, it may encounter complex surrounding scenarios, as when a low density IP is placed next to a higher density area. During integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing, the resulting proximity effects may cause failures or electrical targeting mismatches within the IP, due to etch micro-loading and long-range CMP interactions. Designers can only locate these chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) hotspots related to IP placement in the SOC near the end of the design flow, which limits any floorplan changes to fix the hotspots. Standalone IP block QA is insufficient to detect possible layout- or floorplan-induced problems that can affect manufacturing. In this paper, we present a CMP modeling methodology to guard-band IP against topography variations that can occur after IP placement in the SOC design. We emulate low, average, and high-density scenarios surrounding the IP blocks, followed by CMP simulations and hotspot detection using silicon-calibrated CMP models. After simulation, guidelines provided to fix these CMP hotspots surrounding the IP blocks during early design stages to improve manufacturability and yield. This flow will make IPs robust from CMP hotspots that typically appear after SOC floorplanning.
Chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) is a key process in integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing. Successful fabrication of semiconductor devices is highly dependent on the final planarity of the processed layers. Post-CMP topography variation may cause degradation of the circuit performance. Moreover, the depth-of-focus (DOF) requirement is critical for lithography of subsequent layers. As such, planarity requirements are critical for maintaining IC manufacturing technology scaling trends, and supporting device innovation. To mitigate post-CMP planarity issues, dummy fill insertion has become a commonly-used technique. Many factors impact dummy fill insertion results, including fill shapes, sizes, and the spacing between both fill shapes and the drawn layout patterns. The goal of the CMP engineer is to optimize design planarity, but the variety of fill options means just verifying the design rules for fill is a challenging task. This data collection currently requires a long development cycle, consuming a great deal of time and resources. In this paper, we show how CMP modeling can help resolve these issues by applying CMP modeling and simulations to drive Calibre YieldEnhancer SmartFill parameters that have been optimized for dummy fill. Additional capabilities in the SmartFill functionality automate CMP hotspot fixing steps. Using CMP simulations, engineers can get feedback about post-CMP planarity for given fill options in a much shorter time. Not only does this move dummy fill optimization experiments from a real lab into a virtual lab of CMP modeling and simulation, but it also provides more time for these experiments, providing improved results.
KEYWORDS: Chemical mechanical planarization, 3D modeling, Manufacturing, Process modeling, Data modeling, Copper, Semiconducting wafers, Back end of line, Chemical vapor deposition, Design for manufacturability
Vertical NAND (3D NAND) designs provide unprecedented improvements in input/output (I/O) performance and storage density, but require additional analysis to ensure manufacturing and market success. While 3D stacked architectures greatly reduce chip area at advanced technology nodes, greater topology uniformity is essential, not only for inter-layers stacking, but also for the chip bonding process. As the link between design and manufacturing, design for manufacturing (DFM) predicts potential manufacturing issues during the design stage, enabling design teams to modify the layout and mitigate the risk. The copper interconnect process can be modeled through multiple process steps, from film stacking, etch, and copper deposition to polishing. The simulated topology of a given design predicts potential risky areas that may be fixed by changing designs or inserting dummy fill prior to manufacturing. This simulation is a useful technique during yield ramp-up, and can shorten the cycle from design to manufacturing. This paper presents a solution for BEOL CMP modeling and analysis on BEOL copper interconnect of a 3D NAND flow.
KEYWORDS: Chemical mechanical planarization, 3D modeling, Data modeling, Front end of line, Calibration, Polishing, Oxides, Manufacturing, Process modeling, Transmission electron microscopy
Chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) is a key process that reduces chip topography variation during manufacturing. Any variation outside of specifications can cause hotspots, which negatively impact yield. As technology moves forward, especially in memory processes like 3D NAND, high-quality surface planarity is required to overcome manufacturing challenges in each process step. Any topography variation in the front-end-of-line (FEOL) must be taken into consideration, as it may dramatically impact the surface planarity achieved by subsequent manufacturing steps. Rule-based checking of the design is not sufficient to discover all potential CMP hotspots. An accurate FEOL CMP model is necessary to predict design-induced CMP hotspots and optimize the use of dummy fill to alleviate manufacturing challenges. While back-end-of-line (BEOL) CMP modeling technology has matured in recent years, FEOL CMP modeling is still facing multiple challenges. This paper describes how an accurate FEOL CMP model may be built, and how interlayer dielectric (ILD) layer CMP simulations may be used for 3D NAND design improvement. In the example of ILD CMP model validation for a 3D NAND product, it is shown that the model predictions match well with the silicon data and that the model may successfully be used for hotspot prediction in production designs prior to manufacturing.
Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) is the essential process for planarization of wafer surface in semiconductor manufacturing. CMP process helps to produce smaller ICs with more electronic circuits improving chip speed and performance. CMP also helps to increase throughput and yield, which results in reduction of IC manufacturer’s total production costs. CMP simulation model will help to early predict CMP manufacturing hotspots and minimize the CMP and CMP induced Lithography and Etch defects [2]. In the advanced process nodes, conventional dummy fill insertion for uniform density is not able to address all the CMP short-range, long-range, multi-layer stacking and other effects like pad conditioning, slurry selectivity, etc. In this paper, we present the flow for 20nm CMP modeling using Mentor Graphics CMP modeling tools to build a multilayer Cu-CMP model and study hotspots. We present the inputs required for good CMP model calibration, challenges faced with metrology collections and techniques to optimize the wafer cost. We showcase the CMP model validation results and the model applications to predict multilayer topography accumulation affects for hotspot detection. We provide the flow for early detection of CMP hotspots with Calibre CMPAnalyzer to improve Design-for-Manufacturability (DFM) robustness.
An accurate model for the self-stop copper chemical mechanical polishing (Cu-CMP) process has been developed using
CMP modeling technology from Mentor Graphics. This technology was applied on data from Sony to create and optimize
copper electroplating (ECD), Cu-CMP, and barrier metal polishing (BM-CMP) process models. These models take into
account layout pattern dependency, long range diffusion and planarization effects, as well as microloading from local
pattern density. The developed ECD model accurately predicted erosion and dishing over the entire range of width and
space combinations present on the test chip. Then, the results of the ECD model were used as an initial structure to model
the Cu-CMP step. Subsequently, the result of Cu-CMP was used for the BM-CMP model creation. The created model
was successful in reproducing the measured data, including trends for a broad range of metal width and densities. Its
robustness is demonstrated by the fact that it gives acceptable prediction of final copper thickness data although the
calibration data included noise from line scan measurements. Accuracy of the Cu-CMP model has a great impact on the
prediction results for BM-CMP. This is a critical feature for the modeling of high precision CMP such as self-stop Cu-CMP. Finally, the developed model could successfully extract planarity hotspots that helped identify potential problems
in production chips before they were manufactured. The output thickness values of metal and dielectric can be used to drive layout enhancement tools and improve the accuracy of timing analysis.
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