VLSI DESIGN

EE 401
WEEK 1 & 2

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 Fabrication of CMOS integrated
Circuits
• An IC consists of several patterned
layers of material that are used to form
transistors and provide
interconnections for the circuit
• Minimum Feature size currently is less
than 0.12µm which allows a packing
density of more than 100 million FETs
in a single IC package

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 Fabrication of CMOS integrated
Circuits
• Silicon ICs are created on large circular
sheets called ‘Wafers’
• These are 100 to 300mm in diameter
and about 0.4 to 0.7mm thick

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 Fabrication of CMOS integrated
Circuits
• Wafer Flats: used as a reference for
forming the wafer grids
• Additional Flats on a wafer would
contain codes that will keep the
information regarding the wafer and its
processing
• Processing/Manufacturing Capacity is
expressed in terms of Wafer Starts per
day/week/Month etc.
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 Fabrication of CMOS integrated
Circuits
• Fabrication Yield:

• NG= Number of working/good dies

• NT= Total number of dies present on the
wafer

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 Fabrication of CMOS integrated
Circuits
• Die Area (Adie)=One critically important variable in
controlling yield
• The total number of die sites (NT) on a wafer are
given by:

• de=Wasted edge distance

• d=wafer dia
• Adie=Die area

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 Fabrication of CMOS integrated
Circuits
• Die Area (Adie)=One critically important variable in
controlling yield
• The total number of die sites (NT) on a wafer are
given by:

• de=Wasted edge distance

• d=wafer dia
• Adie=Die area

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 Fabrication of CMOS integrated
Circuits
• Larger the die area, Lesser the yield! Represented by
the following equation:

• Here A= Die Area and D is the Defect Density in cm-2

• D represents the limit on perfection
• For modern processing technologies a D of 1cm-2 is
quite a reasonable value

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Fabrication of CMOS integrated
Circuits

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Fabrication of CMOS integrated
Circuits

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 Fabrication of CMOS integrated
Circuits
• Economics of Silicon wafer processing
is a very important aspect.
Profit = Csell – C chip

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 Material Growth and Deposition

• ICs are created by stacking layers of materials in a

pre-specified sequence
• Both the electrical and material properties of these
layers are important in establishing the
characteristics of these devices formed within an IC
• Most layers are created first then patterned using
the lithographic techniques

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 Silicon Dioxide (SiO2)
• A critically important material in IC processing
Properties:
- Excellent Electrical Insulator
- Exceptionally good Adhesive
properties
-Can easily be grown on the silicon wafer or deposited on
top of it
- Also called ‘Quartz Glass’ or simply ‘Glass’

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