Critical Area Analysis of IC layout for automotive application

Design for Manufacturing (DFM) and Design for Reliability (DFR) are important measure to verify and increase a product's manufacturability and reliability. This assessment can be achieved with Critical Area Analysis (CAA). In this study, the CAA results are correlated to the reliability data in terms of Defect Per Million (DPM) derived from the number of customer's field return units. Our differentiator approach was to analyze the defects and the hot spot location of the failed unit, and map the location to the CAA heat map to investigate if the failure locations fall in the critical area. The analysis was performed on products with high DPM rate. This paper shows some of the mapping examples and the outcome indicated > 50% Back End of Line (BEOL) failure can be potentially avoided upfront in layout design.