Reticle Exposure Plans for Multi-Project Wafers

A reticle exposure plan for a multi-project wafer (MPW) defines the sites where reticle images are printed on the wafer. In this paper, we propose an approach to finding a reticle exposure plan that minimizes the wafer fabrication cost rather than the number of wafers. Our approach achieves up to 20% reduction in wafer fabrication cost for low-volume production and 4% reduction for higher volume production when compared to a method that simply minimizes the number of wafers. We also find that printing partial reticle images on wafer edge does not pay off for low-volume production and is marginally better for higher volume production.