Infineon Technologies Richmond, LP

Qimonda Ag

Heinrich Ollendorf

Robert T Fuller

Stacey Cabral

Reinhold Ott

Herbert Lammering

Metal residue on a semiconductor surface resulting from metal chemical mechanical polishing ('CMP') process are eradicated using a dry clean process. The dry cleaning uniformly removes or substantially eliminates metal residue from the surface of the semiconductor. An unintended metal short that may be present due to the residue may thereby be eliminated by adjusting the dry cleaning process based on a type of dry cleaning material, and type and a thickness of the residue.

Post metal chemical mechanical polishing dry cleaning

In accordance with the present invention, a method, which may be implemented by employing a program storage device, for determining yield loss for a device includes the steps of determining killing probabilities corresponding to values of inspection parameters based on historic inspection information, determining defects on the device and ordering the defects by classifying the defects according to the inspection parameters. The defects adopt the killing probabilities associated with the same values of the inspection parameters. The method further includes the step of calculating a predicted yield loss based on the defects and the adopted killing probabilities. The method further includes the step of applying statistical process control to the predicted yield loss for all in-line inspection (process) steps.

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Richmond, VA, United States of America

Heinrich Ollendorf