It is believed that smaller correction segments could achieve better pattern fidelity, however, some unstable OPC results which are beyond the capability of common OPC correction schemes were found once the segment length is less than a certain threshold. The dilemma between offering more degree-of-freedom by decreasing the correction segment length at the cost of longer correction time and the instability induced by the reduced segment length challenges every OPC engineer. In this paper, 2 indices are introduced; the segmentation index is proposed to determine a reasonable minimum segment length while the stability index can be used to examine whether the correction system is a stiff convergence problem. A compromised correction algorithm is also proposed to consider the OPC accuracy, stability and runtime simultaneously. The correction results and the runtime are analyzed.

Date Published: 16 March 2009
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 7274, Optical Microlithography XXII, 72742G (16 March 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.814907

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7274:
Optical Microlithography XXII
Harry J. Levinson; Mircea V. Dusa, Editor(s)