A GENERIC METHOD TO DEVELOP A DEFECT MONITORING SYSTEM FOR IC PROCESSES

Nowadays, the IC features are still becoming smaller, the areas larger and the packing densities higher. Thus, the occurrence of defects has a growing impact on production yields. Defect monitoring systems are widely used to obtain information about these defects. This paper describes a process-independent method to develop such a defect monitoring system. This implies that rules are given for the design of the monitor, the required resistance measurements, the applied data processing and the data presentation. This method can be applied to design monitors for various applications. For example, the monitor can contain one or more layers and can be process or product-related. An application of the method is also shown.