No abstract

In recent years, Quick-TAT (Turn-Around Time) in preparing masks is very important factor together with the complexity and cost in mask development and manufacturing in higher-end devices. Especially in the development phase of customer-driven devices such as SOC,MCU and so on, QTAT role of mask supply might get a larger weight in LSI business. However, overhead in workflow, system and burden of mask users (designer, etc) in mask making are significant, not to mention the increase of OPC processing time and DA cost.For responding to the efficient and precipitous manufacturing requirement even for complicated leading-edge devices, we should focus on the optimization of workilow system minimization of mask-work resources in users (designer, etc.). Therefore, new Renesas Integrated Mask Operation System (RIMOS) has been developed as making masks"Everywhen you want" supporting five key functions as follows:(1) Simple interface to input mask-making parameters on Web-based integrated system (2) Hierarchical specification system ofhigh maintainability and capability for SEMI-PlO format (3) Easy operation to instruct build-in specification for manufacturing such as complicated CD inspection (4) Bi-directional synchronization between mask-shop and wafer-fabs MES supporting the flexible multi-pass supply of masks (5) On-line quality reporting for mask-SPC monitoring supporting This paper shows architecture of the new system 'RIMOS' and the estimate of TAT reduction in work flow.

We have evaluated a unified mask pattern data format named "OASIS.MASK" 1 and a unified job deck format named "MALY" 2 for mask tools as the input data formats of the inspection tool using the mask data and the photomask produced with the 65nm design rule. The data conversion time and the data volume for the inspection data files were evaluated by comparing with the results for using the native EB data and the native job deck data. The inspection speed and the defect number of the inspection tool were also evaluated with the actual inspection tool. We have confirmed that there is no large issue in applying OASIS.MASK and MALY to the input data formats of the inspection tool and they can become the common intermediate format in our MDP flow. The detail of evaluation results will be mainly introduced in this paper.