Design for manufacturing meets advanced process control: A survey

Nanometer IC designs are increasingly challenged to achieve manufacturing closure, i.e., being fabricated with high product yield due to feature miniaturizations and process variations. Realizing the critical importance of addressing manufacturability/yield during design (which is loosely termed as DFM, design for manufacturing), there has been a surge of research activities recently from both academia and industry under the “DFM” umbrella. While the primary goal of DFM is to enlarge the manufacturing process yield window, DFM needs to work together with advanced process control (APC) to meet such window, which may be shrinking and changing from design to design. The paper will survey the key DFM activities and discuss related advanced process control issues (i.e., the counterpart of manufacturing for design) to provide a holistic perspective on the design and process integration.