Method for homogenizing the thickness of a coating on a patterned layer

A method for homogenizing the thickness of a uniform layer (4) deposited on a layer of a material etched according to functional patterns (3) so that there exist areas where this material is densely present and empty areas, consisting of filling the empty areas with dummy patterns (6) of predetermined dimensions;

• a thickness distribution function, providing the thickness variation (e(x,y)) of the uniform layer for a given distribution (D(x,y)) of the functional and dummy patterns, being known;
• said method comprising, for each empty area, the steps of:
• determining a guard distance (g) greater than the minimum possible distance between patterns;
• calculating the thickness variation which would be obtained if dummy patterns were placed inside of a region defined by the dimension of the empty area reduced by said guard distance;
• and
• if the calculated thickness variation is satisfactory, adopting the chosen dummy pattern distribution, otherwise iteratively repeating the process with a reduced guard distance (g′).