Electron beam exposure method

A method of generating a plurality of two dimensional shapes comprising the steps of:

• organizing a macro, said macro comprising a plurality of fill rectangles, said fill rectangles being organized;
• transforming a subfield pair boundary onto said macro, said transformed boundary defining a plurality of macro portions;
• retrieving a first said portion of said macro from a buffer;
• generating a first portion of a cell from a part of a shape from said first portion of said macro;
• and
• generating at least one unnested shape touching said part of said shape.

A method of graying a macro comprised of a plurality of fill rectangles comprising the steps of:

• a) organizing one said macro for graying, said organizing comprising:
• creating at least one contiguous chain of said fill rectangles,
• creating a chain shadow for each said at lest chain, and
• creating a macro shadow for said macro;
• and
• b) graying said organized macro and, placing a first and second portion of said grayed macro.

A method of generating control for controlling a particle beam tool in exposing a radiation sensitive layer to at least one repetitious shape, said repetitious shape being described by a two dimensional macro, said macro comprising a plurality of fill rectangles, said method comprising the steps of;

• a) organizing said macro, said organizing step comprising the steps of:
• 1) sorting a plurality of fill rectangles in said macro according to the macro's largest dimension, and
• 2) creating at least one chain of rectangles from said sorted fill rectangles, a chain shadow for each said at least one chain, and a macro shadow for said macro;
• and,
• b) placing said macro for each occurrence of said repetitious shape and for each occurrence of said repetitious shape spanning a boundary of a subfield pair graying said macro along said boundary, said placing and graying step comprising the steps of:
• 1) transforming said macro shadow onto each said occurrence of said repetitious shape in said subfield pair until said macro shadow spans said boundary,
• 2) transforming said boundary onto said macro,
• 3) determining which of said fill rectangles lie in each of said pair of subfields,
• 4) determining which of said fill rectangles span said subfield boundary,
• 5) determining which of said fill rectangles form subchains spanning subfield boundaries,
• 6) gray-splicing and placing said spanning rectangles and said subchain fill rectangles lying in an overlap region,
• 7) placing in one said subfield all said fill rectangles completely lying in said subfield and placing in the other said subfield all of said fill rectangles completely lying in said other subfield,
• 8) repeating steps 2-7 for a second subfield pair boundary if at least one said fill rectangle remains unplaced, and
• 9) repeating steps 1-8 until said macro has been transformed onto every said repetitious shape occurrence.