DRC Plus: augmenting standard DRC with pattern matching on 2D geometries

Vito Dai; Jie Yang; Norma Rodriguez; Luigi Capodieci

doi:10.1117/12.716600

28 March 2007 DRC Plus: augmenting standard DRC with pattern matching on 2D geometries

Vito Dai, Jie Yang, Norma Rodriguez, Luigi Capodieci

Proceedings Volume 6521, Design for Manufacturability through Design-Process Integration; 65210A (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.716600
Event: SPIE Advanced Lithography, 2007, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

Design rule constraints (DRC) are the industry workhorse for constraining design to ensure both physical and electrical manufacturability. However, as technology processes continue to shrink and aggressive resolution enhancement technologies (RET) and optical proximity correction (OPC) are applied, standard DRC sometimes fails to fully capture the concept of design manufacturability. Consequently, some DRC-clean layout designs are found to be difficult to manufacture. Attempts have been made to "patch up" standard DRC with additional rules to identify these specific problematic cases. However, due to the lack of specificity with DRC, these efforts often meet with mixed-success. Although it typically resolves the issue at hand, quite often, it is the enforcement of some DRC rule that causes other problematic geometries to be generated, as designers attempt to meet all the constraints given to them. In effect, designers meet the letter of the law, as defined by the DRC implementation code, without understanding the "spirit of the rule". This leads to more exceptional cases being added to the DRC manual, further increasing its complexity. DRC Plus adopts a different approach. It augments standard DRC by applying fast 2D pattern matching to design layout to identify problematic 2D configurations which are difficult to manufacture. The tool then returns specific feedback to designers on how to resolve these issues. This basic approach offers several advantages over other DFM techniques: It is enforceable, it offers a simple pass/no-pass criterion, it is simple to document as part of the design manual, it does not require compute intensive simulations, and it does not require highly-accurate lithographic models that may not be available during design. These advantages allow DRC Plus to be inserted early in the design flow, and enforced in conjunction with standard DRC.

Citation Download Citation

Vito Dai, Jie Yang, Norma Rodriguez, and Luigi Capodieci "DRC Plus: augmenting standard DRC with pattern matching on 2D geometries", Proc. SPIE 6521, Design for Manufacturability through Design-Process Integration, 65210A (28 March 2007); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.716600

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