Initialization for robust inverse synthesis of phase-shifting masks in optical projection lithography.

Generalized inverse lithography methods for phase-shifting mask design.

Optical proximity correction (OPC) and phase shifting masks (PSM) are resolution enhancement techniques (RET) used extensively in the semiconductor industry to improve the resolution and pattern fidelity of optical lithography. In this paper, we develop generalized gradient-based RET optimization methods to solve for the inverse lithography problem, where the search space is not constrained to ...

Inverse Synthesis of Phase-Shifting Mask for Optical Lithography

We applied an inverse synthesis method to design phase-shifting mask (PSM) via gradient descent optimization under the coherent illumination assumption. The synthesized PSMs have high fidelity and sharp image slope. ©2007 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: (100.3190) Inverse problems; (110.5220) Photolithography

Characterizing Polarized Illumination in High Numerical Aperture Optical Lithography with Phase Shifting Masks

PSM design for inverse lithography with partially coherent illumination.

Phase-shifting masks (PSM) are resolution enhancement techniques (RET) used extensively in the semiconductor industry to improve the resolution and pattern fidelity of optical lithography. Recently, a set of gradient-based PSM optimization methods have been developed to solve for the inverse lithography problem under coherent illumination. Most practical lithography systems, however, use partia...

A Robust Computational Algorithm for Inverse Photomask Synthesis in Optical Projection Lithography

Inverse lithography technology formulates the photomask synthesis as an inverse mathematical problem. To solve this, we propose a variational functional and develop a robust computational algorithm, where the proposed functional takes into account the process variations and incorporates several regularization terms that can control the mask complexity. We establish the existence of the minimize...