OPC Accuracy and Development Time Improvement for Advanced Technology Nodes

Abstract

Double Dipole (DDL), Double Patterning (DP), Spacers and other advanced process technologies require an enormous amount of CD and tool data collection and development time for OPC modeling. In this paper we studied a way to reduce the overall OPC preparation time and increase the OPC accuracy by early and accurate collection of the OPC measurements, automatic CD-SEM recipe generation and CD data analysis and model calibration with Brion's Tachyon software. We reviewed the design of the OPC test chip, OPC exposures, data analysis and OPC modeling on the advanced and accurate Tachyon T2.0 OPC platform and ways to improve modeling cycle time. Another critical parameter of the OPC modeling is accuracy as one of the main parts of the CD error budget. We investigated approaches to OPC modeling accuracy and achieved RMS below 1nm for critical features by using module data of the respective ASML TWINSCAN XT:1900i scanner.