Due to recent changes in the manufacturing of FEOL (front end of line) layers it is increasingly difficult to provide rapid learning cycles required to drive yield improvement during new product introduction (NPI). The Direct Probe Characterization Vehicle (DPCV) Test Chip presented here provides direct access to thousands of transistors on a product chip. Only two masks are needed (contact & metal 1) to provide access to the DUTs of the unchanged FEOL layers of a product chip. The DPCV test chip is capable of matching the distribution of product transistor pattern. Measurement dataindicate that corrective actions to the design and/or process recipes will reduce the gap between measured product chip transistors and their expected behavior based on SPICE simulations.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.