Design rule methodology to improve the manufacturability of the copper CMP process

A systematic approach to generate design rules and layout guidelines for damascene metal layers that enhance the robustness and manufacturability of designs is presented. The intra-die sheet resistance variation due to line width and pattern density effects is characterized for single and multi-level interconnects and the feature interaction distance is determined to be about 30 /spl mu/m. It is shown that the best way to minimize the sheet resistance spread is by implementing rules for the minimum and maximum space between any two features as a function of their widths.