Applied Materials, Inc.
Methodology of incorporating wafer physical measurement with digital simulation for improving semiconductor device fabrication

Abstract:

A hot spot methodology incorporates wafer physical measurement with digital simulation for identifying and monitoring critical hot spots. Wafer physical data are collected from the processed wafer of the semiconductor device on a plurality of target locations. Hot spot candidates and corresponding simulation data are generated by digital simulation based on models and verifications of optical proximity and lithographic process correction according to the design data of a semiconductor device. Data analytics provides data correlation between the collected wafer physical data and the simulation data. Data analytics further performs data correction on the simulation data according to the wafer physical data that have best correlation with the simulation data to better predict critical hot spots.