Sung Ho Kim, Oun-Ho Park, et al.
Small
In optical lithography for microchip manufacturing, it is important that the focal ranges of all patterns in the layout be closely aligned in order to maximize a common process window. In practice, large pattern-dependent variations in the position of the best focus are observed, which have been traced back to phase errors induced on the image-forming beams by scattering from mask topography. We show that this degradation mechanism can be exploited as a source of corrective phase shift, allowing pattern-dependent focus shifts to be controlled purely by changing the details of the mask layout, without requiring a significant change in the mask-making process. Phase distortions in the imaging beams are corrected by the optimized insertion of orthogonally oriented subresolution jogs into existing edges in the layout, thereby introducing a tailored scatter contribution whose quadrature component has the opposite sign from that of the primary edge. © 2014 The Authors.
Sung Ho Kim, Oun-Ho Park, et al.
Small
Fernando Marianno, Wang Zhou, et al.
INFORMS 2021
J.H. Kaufman, Owen R. Melroy, et al.
Synthetic Metals
Ellen J. Yoffa, David Adler
Physical Review B