Paper
29 October 2014 Full-flow RET creation, comparison, and selection
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
Patterning scaling trends are expected to continue until at least the 5 nm node. With the introduction of EUV now delayed until at least the 7 nm node, 193i patterning will continue mainstream use for the foreseeable future. This scaling increases reliance on optimized OPC and illumination and imposes strict requirements on RET solutions, which we define here as source, optics, and mask synthesis (including SRAF). Along with the patterning requirements, any solution must be calculated efficiently. To meet these requirements, a new RET Selection flow has been built using the Calibre platform. This flow includes SMO, Mask synthesis to further tune the output mask, Verification, and Analysis. The entire flow is session based, allowing runs to be cloned, queued, and compared. The flow is built on a robust GUI framework featuring persistent database integration. The central component of the flow is a new SMO algorithm that offers improved scalability using parallel implementation, and improved accuracy using thick mask modeling and resist models. Lithography-aware mask manufacturability limit enforcement is possible using an integrated inverse lithography tool. This also allows large area patterns to be included for RET benchmarking purposes. Finally, the analysis and visualization stages of the flow allow a particular solution to be compared against other candidates using any image metric desired. Comparison metrics can be customized for layer and customer requirements. In this paper, we will summarize the key points of our flow, and demonstrate it using several experiments.
© (2014) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Neal Lafferty, Yuan He, Mikhail Silakov, Toshi Endo, and Kostas Adam "Full-flow RET creation, comparison, and selection", Proc. SPIE 9235, Photomask Technology 2014, 92351Z (29 October 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2069473
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CITATIONS
Cited by 2 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Resolution enhancement technologies

Source mask optimization

Photomasks

Optical lithography

Lithography

Nanoimprint lithography

Optical proximity correction

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