Typically, the printing of contact patterns uses a dark-field (DF) mask in combination with a positive tone resist and positive tone development (PTD) process. PTD, which has a mature process and simulation model, had been widely applied in high-volume manufacturing. For the low aerial image quality of a DF mask in advanced node, PTD is substituted by negative tone development (NTD), which uses a positive tone resist and bright-field mask. Due to the high cost and immature simulation model of NTD process, it is worthwhile to extend PTD to some critical patterns. With the purpose of improving the resist profile and process window (PW) of the contact pattern with a PTD process in advanced node, an optimization method combined with the idea of a genetic algorithm is put forward. For performance of the optimized resist under the conditions of best focus and best dose, an evaluation based on the through pitch square contact patterns with the critical dimension (CD) fixed at 50 nm has been provided. The generalization performance of the optimized resist is also analyzed by a systematic method, which contains the resist profile and PW simulation on the base of through CD and through pitch contact patterns. The above simulation results verify the effectiveness and validity of the proposed optimization method.
A new focus monitor mask having novel grating structure is proposed to measure the focus variation of the scanner. The grating pattern composes of transparent line, opaque line, π-phase shift groove and π/2 -phase shift groove with their width ratio equivalent to 1:4:1:2. By using this structure, one of the first order and one of the second order of the diffraction spectrum are eliminated. Therefore, the lithography image is formed by the interference of the zeroth order and the left positive (or negative) 1st and 2nd orders, which is more sensitive to the subtle change of focus. The basic principle and characteristic of the proposed mask is described in this paper. Simulations with the lithography simulator PROLITH shows that the monitoring accuracy is improved more than 25%, compared with the conventional phase grating focus monitor (PGFM). The novel mask proposed in our job has potential to be an efficient candidate for measuring the defocus of scanner in the immersion lithography with hyper NA.
Source-mask optimization (SMO) is used in advanced computational lithography to further enlarge the process margin. SMO provides the source for subsequent optical proximity correction (OPC) to generate the mask with reasonable manufacturability and functionality. Little attention is paid to the mask optimization procedure of SMO. The procedure may potentially cause significant mismatch between a source-mask optimized mask (SMOed mask) and an optical proximity-corrected mask (OPCed mask), which affects the efficiency of the optimization. We investigate and report a specific example of an efficient method to align the SMOed mask to the OPCed mask so as to reduce the cycles of computational lithography and improve the predictability of SMO. This method incorporates techniques of retargeting and manipulating the cost function (CF) into SMO to modify the CF and eventually change the mask shapes. Various defects can also be corrected to minimize the needed number of hotspots, which also improves the effectiveness of SMO and decreases the cycles of computational lithography. Our sample simulations performed on a metal layer with both diffractive optical element (DOE) and freeform illumination demonstrate that the proposed SMO further enhances the process window (PW) by more than 30% compared with conventional SMO. The optimized mask shape is also more similar to OPCed mask. Experimental verification is also performed to validate the proposed method.
The impact of mask three dimensions (M3D) effect on lithography processes is getting more pronounced from 32 nm nodes1-2. In this paper, we report four research progresses on the M3Deffect. Firstly, the impacts of M3D effect on the best focus (BF) offset were studied with though pitch as test pattern. The M3D effect has negative impacts on the BF, generating the BF offset pattern by pattern. The BF offset strongly depends on MoSi film thickness (THK). However the impact of MoSi profile, or side wall angle (SWA) could be ignored. Secondly, M3D OPC is needed to mitigate the shift of dose and focus center. Thirdly, as long as enough shade, the thinner MoSi, the less BF shift, as electromagnetic field (EMF) effect makes space behave smaller, which leads to higher contrast but higher mask error enhancement factor(MEEF); So the trade-off between contrast and MEEF is needed. And MoSi THK 43.7 nm in production supposed to be the optimized value from this study. Finally, compared to attenuating phase shifting mask (att.PSM) mask, opaque MoSi on Glass (OMOG) mask is more robust in terms of MEEF, the normalized image logarithmic slope (NILS) etc., not obviously influenced by mask duty ratio.
Optical proximity correction (OPC) is a resolution enhancement technique extensively used in the semiconductor industry to improve the resolution and pattern fidelity of optical lithography. In pixel-based OPC (PBOPC), the layout is divided into small pixels, which are then iteratively modified until the simulated print image on the wafer matches the desired pattern. However, the increasing complexity and size of modern integrated circuits make PBOPC techniques quite computationally intensive. This paper focuses on developing a practical and efficient PBOPC algorithm based on a nonparametric kernel regression, a well-known technique in machine learning. Specifically, we estimate the OPC patterns based on the geometric characteristics of the original layout corresponding to the same region and a series of training examples. Experimental results on metal layers show that our proposed approach significantly improves the speed of a current professional PBOPC software by a factor of 2 to 3, and may further reduce the mask complexity.
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