AIR (Aerial Image Retargeting): A novel technique for in-fab automatic model-based retargeting-for-yield

In this paper, we present a novel methodology for identifying lithography hot-spots and automatically transforming them into the lithography-friendly design space. This fast model-based technique is applied at the mask tape-out stage by slightly shifting and resizing the designs. It implicitly does a similar functionality as that of the Process Window OPC (PWOPC) but more efficiently. Being a relatively fast technique it also offers the means of providing the designer with all the design systematic deviations from the actual (on-wafer) parameters by including it in the parameter-extraction flow. We applied this methodology successfully to 28-nm Metal levels and showed that it efficiently (better quality and faster) improves the lithography-related yield and reliability issues.