Abstract

The steady move towards feature sizes ever deeper in the subwavelength regime has necessitated the increased use of aggressive resolution enhancement techniques (RET) in optical lithography. The use of ever more complex RET methods including strong phase shift masks and complex OPC has led to an alarming increase in the cost of photomasks, which cannot be amortized by many types of semiconductor applications. This paper reviews an alternative RET approach, dense template phase shift lithography, that can substantially reduce the cost of optical RET. The use of simple dense grating templates can also eliminate serious problems encountered in subwavelength lithography including optical proximity and spatial frequency effects. We show that, despite additional design rule restrictions and the use of multiple exposures per critical level, this type of lithography approach can make economic sense depending on the number of wafers produced per critical photomask.

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