Regularization of inverse photomask synthesis to enhance manufacturability

Ningning Jia; Alfred K. Wong; Edmund Y. Lam

doi:10.1117/12.837512

11 December 2009 Regularization of inverse photomask synthesis to enhance manufacturability

Ningning Jia, Alfred K. Wong, Edmund Y. Lam

Proceedings Volume 7520, Lithography Asia 2009; 75200E (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.837512
Event: SPIE Lithography Asia, 2009, Taipei, Taiwan

Abstract

Mask manufacturability has been considered as a major issue in the adoption of inverse lithography (IL) in practice. With smaller technology nodes, IL distorts the mask pattern more aggressively. The distorted mask often contains curvilinear contour and irregular shapes, which cast a heavy computation burden on segmentation and data preparation. Total variation (TV) has been used for regularization in previous work, but it is not very effective in regulating the mask shape to be rectangular. In this paper, we apply TV regularization not only on the mask image but also on the mask edges, which forces the curves of edges to be more vertical or horizontal, because they give smaller TV values. Except for rectilinearity, a group of geometrical specifications of the mask pattern set by mask manufacture rule control (MRC) is also important for mask manufacturability. To prevent these characteristics from appearing, we also propose an intervention scheme into the optimization framework.

Citation Download Citation

Ningning Jia, Alfred K. Wong, and Edmund Y. Lam "Regularization of inverse photomask synthesis to enhance manufacturability", Proc. SPIE 7520, Lithography Asia 2009, 75200E (11 December 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.837512

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