Using segmented models for initial mask perturbation and OPC speedup

Author's Department

Electronics & Communications Engineering Department

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https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2027718

Document Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering

Publication Date

12-12-2013

doi

10.1117/12.2027718

Abstract

Sub-wavelength photolithography heavily depends on OPC (optical proximity correction), where the pattern fidelity and CD Uniformity can never be achieved without a good OPC. The OPC runtime-resource factor has been exponentially increasing every node. It is currently approaching a dangerous level in terms of runtime and cost as the 20nm node is approaching production. A reasonable portion of the OPC computation is spent in small iterative mask perturbations trying to reach a state that prints closer to the OPC target, followed by the final few iterations aiming to accurately achieve printability on target with an almost zero EPE (edge placement error). In our work, we propose replacing the first few iterations of OPC with a single fast multi-model iteration that can perturb the OPC mask into a shape that is very close to its final state. This approach is proven to reduce the OPC runtime by an average of 28% without degrading the final mask quality. © 2013 SPIE.

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