XYALIS announce today that thanks to "non destructive" nanometric measurement equipment's, XYALIS is able to build Chemo Mechanical Planarization (CMP) models.

These models are used for estimating the critical areas where dummy filling is needed to smooth the thickness variation.

With advanced processes starting at 65nm and below, using a model based estimator is a must to find critical areas and reduce the number of dummy tiles inserted and thus, reduce the parasitics and yield lost.

This measures are available within a collaboration of XYALIS and CIME - Nanotech (Minatec Research Center) in Grenoble. Thanks to this partnership, XYALIS will be able to provide high accuracy thickness measurements on wafers.

Building a model is a complex process that must be qualified by "non destructive" measures on production chips. These measures help to analyze the layers thickness and fine tune the model. All the requested data to build these models can be obtained with an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM). With a resolution possibly going to less than 1nm, accuracy is no more a challenge.

GTsmooth, XYALIS density estimator and tiling engine, uses such models. With these measures, XYALIS will reduce the time needed in building a specific model.

XYALIS will present a demo of AFM possibilities on Booth (#861) at DAC 07 in San Diego, from June 4 to June 8..

3D view of grid metal deposition (5um line width)

Cross section of poly silicon surface (resolution of 0.1 nm)