Slotting
Beginner
Cutting holes into very wide metal wires so they don’t polish badly in the factory.
Novice
Cutting small rectangular holes into wide metal, often power wires, to bring a window under the maximum density rule and keep the wide metal from lifting off during polishing.
Expert
It narrows the wire’s cross-section, so its resistance, voltage drop and current density must be rechecked. Slots must avoid the areas where vias land. Some processes generate slots during mask preparation; others want them drawn on a slot datatype.
Explained in GDS & tapeout (Design Flow).
See also: Metal fill (density fill), Density window.