Design for manufacturing in the semiconductor industry: the Litho/Design Workshops

Design for Manufacturing (DFM) practices for productivity improvement have been applied with great success in many industries, including automobile manufacturing, engine design, and consumer electronics. Until now, Moore´s Law for IC productivity has been dominated by innovation and invention, not a drive for efficiency. With IC fab costs dramatically increasing, DFM procedures are becoming far more attractive. In this paper, we briefly review the general DFM practices that have been successful in other industries, and report on the results from an example in the semiconductor industry, produced by the SEMATECH Litho/Design Workshops. The results of these workshops have assisted the adoption of advanced lithographic DFM technologies, such as OPC (Optimized Process Correction) and accelerated progress along the Moore´s Law productivity curve