PATTERN SELECTION FOR FULL-CHIP SOURCE AND MASK OPTIMIZATION
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Abstract
The present invention relates to lithographic apparatuses and processes, and more particularly to tools for co-optimizing illumination sources and masks for use in lithographic apparatuses and processes. According to certain aspects, the present invention enables full chip pattern coverage while lowering the computation cost by intelligently selecting a small set of critical design patterns from the full set of clips to be used in source and mask optimization. Optimization is performed only on these selected patterns to obtain an optimized source. The optimized source is then used to optimize the mask (e.g. using OPC and manufacturability verification) for the full chip, and the process window performance results are compared. If the results are comparable to conventional full-chip SMO, the process ends, otherwise various methods are provided for iteratively converging on the successful result.
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Citations
40 Claims
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1-20. -20. (canceled)
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21. A method of configuring a lithographic process of imaging a portion of a design layout onto a substrate, the method comprising:
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evaluating, by a computer system, a lithographic process performance of a set of patterns from the portion of the design layout in conjunction with an illumination source; based on the evaluated performance, identifying at least one of the patterns as a potential hot spot; and modifying, by the computer system, the illumination source and/or the portion of the design layout based on a subset of the patterns, the subset including the at least one pattern identified as a potential hotspot. - View Dependent Claims (22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35)
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36. A method of configuring a lithographic process of imaging a portion of a design layout onto a substrate, the method comprising:
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obtaining a full set of clips from the portion of the design layout; identifying at least one clip from the full set of the clips as a potential hot spot based on a lithographic process performance of the full set of clips; and optimizing an illumination source and/or the portion of the design layout based on a subset of the full set of clips, the subset including the at least one clip identified as a potential hotspot. - View Dependent Claims (37, 38, 39, 40)
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Specification