International Business Machines Corporation

Howard Ted Barrett

Toshiharu Furukawa

James Albert Slinkman

Pierre J Bouchard

Karen Strube Edwards

Maureen Fitzpatrick McFadden

Jeffrey C Stamm

James B Clairmont

Florence Marie St Pierre Sears

John F Rudden, Jr

John J Ellis-Monaghan

Donald Walter Rakowski

A method and system is provided to use the same design manipulation processes for both chip design and kerf design. Concurrent generation of kerf designs and chip designs provides a consistent, accurate, and repeatable process. Improved quality of wafer testing results because the data in the kerf matches data in the chip. The total cycle time for mask manufacturing is reduced because kerf build is accomplished prior to start of the mask manufacturing process. Also provided is the use of load balancing across multiple servers during kerf and chip design to optimize computing resources.

System and method of automatically generating kerf design data

A method for selectively heating a substrate without damaging surrounding regions of the substrate. In particular, the invention provides for a method of selectively activating doped regions of a semiconductor device without damaging surrounding doped and activated regions. Specifically, the invention provides a laser anneal which activates locally doped regions, while surrounding doped and activated regions are protected using a reflective mask.

Micro heating of selective regions

A substrate, such as a semiconductor chip or wafer, is implanted along with product wafers in an ion implant vacuum system. The substrate is then annealed in an annealing step that is accomplished while the substrate is within the vacuum system. The annealer is a rapid thermal annealer, such as a laser annealer or a flash lamp annealer. The annealing step does not affect the product wafers. Then a measurement is performed on the implanted and annealed substrate while it is within the vacuum system that can be suitably correlated with implant dose. The measurement can be with a technique such as a four point probe or with a tool that measures optical reflectivity from a surface of the implanted substrate. An additional implant can then be provided to product wafers if necessary to come closer to the desired dose.

In-situ ion implant activation and measurement apparatus

Growing community of inventors

Starksboro, VT, United States of America

Howard Ted Barrett