EB proximity effect correction system for 0.25-μm device reticle fabrication

Abstract

An electron-beam (EB) proximity effect correction (PEC) system for mask making has been developed, and is applied for 0.25 micrometers device reticle fabrication with high accuracy and fast calculation speed. This system consists of three important functions: (1) fast proximity effect correction (2) high speed browser data interface (3) correction verification. For the fast proximity effect correction, SOR (Successive Over-Relaxation) method is applied for matrix calculation and two dimensional integral table is used for convolution. A parallel processing system using three workers (135MIPS each) controlled by one distributor (135MIPS) has been developed. For high accuracy, a delicate pattern data fracturing and outline algorithm is developed. The algorithm is also useful for OPC (Optical Proximity effect Correction). To realize high speed large volume data clipping, SPIF (Sony Plot Intermediate Format) is used with a modification to accept dose modulation data. A data verification and browser subsystem SRI (SPIF Reticle Image browser) is also constructed utilizing a SPIF data interface system. In this paper, key technologies supporting each function will be presented and the results applied to 0.25 micrometers rule ASIC (Application-Specific IC) device reticle will also be presented.