Conexant achieves more than 5% yield improvement 

     Using CMP Technology’s  “Smart Dummy” Fill

Conexant Systems Inc. have successful deployed the “smart dummy” fill technology in it's production line. By applying “smart dummy”, Conexant achieved more than 5% yield improvement over conventional in-house dummy fill.  The smart dummy fill also corresponded to a measured post-CMP film thickness variation improvement of 40%.  The experiment was conducted on a mature product with the smart dummy fill applied within Shallow Trench Isolation (STI) and ILD1 CMP processing.

“It has been well known that smart dummy improves CMP uniformity significantly and hence improves yield. This is, however, the first time we know by hard evidence that yield enhancement can be obtained. By working with Conexant, a leading supplier of semicondutors, we were exposed to real-life fab problems  which were solved for a typical main stream user.  We are very pleased with the results and thank engineers at Conexant, such as Larry Camilletti, Bill Kreiger, for their valuable inputs and Conexant management for their support” Said George Liu, President of CMP Technology.