The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 16, 2004
Filed:
Mar. 09, 2000
Thomas W. Winter, McKinney, TX (US);
Thomas K. Powell, Jr., Plano, TX (US);
Steven M. James, Dallas, TX (US);
Texas Instruments Incorporated, Dallas, TX (US);
Abstract
Device design information ( ) for a semiconductor device is used to generate theoretical probability of failure information ( ), which represents the probability that a manufacturing defect will cause an electrical failure in an actual device fabricated according to the design information. An actual wafer ( ), which contains a plurality of devices ( ) manufactured according to the design information, is inspected for actual defects ( ). The probability of failure information is then used to determine for each of several detected defects a corresponding probability value. Then, the individual probability values for the respective defects are combined in order to obtain a composite failure probability, which serves as a basis for evaluating the expected yield of operational devices from the particular wafer.