Image analysis – Applications – Manufacturing or product inspection
Reexamination Certificate
1999-03-23
2002-12-17
Werner, Brian (Department: 2621)
Image analysis
Applications
Manufacturing or product inspection
C700S110000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06496596
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to categorizing defect based on user defined regions, also called bins.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
During fabrication process of solid state devices, such as a semiconductor devices, photomasks and reticles are used to form patterns of each layer of the devices on the wafer. Even an extremely small defect could greatly affect the production yield, circuits reliability or circuits functionality. For these reasons, wafers are inspected, often during the fabrication process upon completion of each step. A die, also called a chip, is a single square or rectangular piece of semiconductor material into which a specific electrical circuit has been fabricated. A single wafer normally has many dice. It may be desirable to have two or more different die patterns repeated on the same wafer.
Currently, defect in a die are detected, however, they are not categorized by user defined regions, nor are the defects analyzed based on those regions. A recognized problem, therefore, is detected defects are not automatically categorized by region to aid in defect analysis.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The aforementioned problems are solved by providing a method of categorizing detected defects based on user definable regions. Such user definable regions can be based on pattern density or other criteria.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5173719 (1992-12-01), Taniguchi et al.
Anil Gandhi et al., An Examination of Empirically Derived Within-Die Local Probabilities of Failure, IEEE Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems, 1997, ISBN: 0-8186-8168-3, pp. 53-61.
Pike Christopher Lee
Zika Steven J.
Advanced Micro Devices , Inc.
Eschweiler & Associates LLC
Werner Brian
LandOfFree
Method for detecting and categorizing defects does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Method for detecting and categorizing defects, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Method for detecting and categorizing defects will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2962117