A Full 3D TCAD Simulation Study of Line-Width Roughness Effects in 65 nm Technology

For the 65nm technology node and beyond, new manufacturability problems are arising that strongly impact device and circuit behavior. Among these problems, line-edge and line-width roughness (LER and LWR) are of particular interest as dominant issues affecting parametric yield. In this paper, we investigate LWR effects by applying latest generation, full 3D TCAD technology including lithography simulation. In addition, our results answer open questions concerning the applicability of 2D slicing approximations vis a vis a 3D modeling effort. While LWR has been investigated by TCAD before, our methodology includes a full 3D process simulation (including lithography) without simplifications to generate the final transistor structures.