Phase-shifting mask design tool

David M. Newmark; Andrew R. Neureuther

doi:10.1117/12.56946

1 January 1992 Phase-shifting mask design tool

David M. Newmark, Andrew R. Neureuther

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 1604, 11th Annual BACUS Symposium on Photomask Technology; (1992) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.56946
Event: 11th Annual BACUS Symposium on Photomask Technology, 1991, Sunnyvale, CA, United States

Abstract

A Computer Aided Design tool is being developed to automatically produce design graphs that will facilitate the layout of phase-shift masks. This tool is a design interface which utilizes SPLAT1 for the aerial image simulations. The program accepts a user specified geometry and the mask parameter space to be explored. It then automatically extracts information such as intensity, contrast, space width, line width, and intensity slope from the SPLAT results for each iteration. In this paper, we apply the design system to a number of phase-shift mask patterns to explore design rule tradeoffs. For dark field masks with isolated spaces and Levenson arrays of spaces, we determine that a shrink of the mask combined with a bloat of open areas shows promise as a means of designing phase-shift masks if one is willing to sacrifice distance between light areas. By examining several typical mask patterns, we also show that an overall shrink of the mask does not require special design rules for each type of feature, but better scaling could result by appropriately developing new rules for different patterns. Since printing clear field masks is also important, we further probe the scalability of phase transitions. We show that a phase transition of 0.6 A/NA is the optimum length to achieve the highest intensity throughout the phase transition region. For 90 degree transitions, a length of 0.6 A/NA is needed while for 60-120 degree transitions, each step transition region must be at least 0.6 A/NA long. Finally, we present a new mask pattern for chains of contacts that has high intensity slope for a pitch of 1.2 A/NA and below.

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David M. Newmark and Andrew R. Neureuther "Phase-shifting mask design tool", Proc. SPIE 1604, 11th Annual BACUS Symposium on Photomask Technology, (1 January 1992); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.56946

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