Lens heating compensation systems and methods
AssigneeASML Netherlands B.V.
InventorsJun Ye, Peng Liu, Yu Cao
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Methods for calibrating a photolithographic system are disclosed. A cold lens contour for a reticle design and at least one hot lens contour for the reticle design are generated from which a process window is defined. Aberrations induced by a lens manipulator are characterized in a manipulator model and the process window is optimized using the manipulator model. Aberrations are characterized by identifying variations in critical dimensions caused by lens manipulation for a plurality of manipulator settings and by modeling behavior of the manipulator as a relationship between manipulator settings and aberrations. The process window may be optimized by minimizing a cost function for a set of critical locations.
Claims24
A method of performing optical proximity correction (OPC) on a target design for a lithographic process, the method comprising:
- obtaining an optical system heating model that accounts for effects of optical system heating in the lithographic process;
- obtaining a set of process window conditions associated with the lithographic process;
- determining one or more pattern failures across the set of process window conditions using the optical system heating model;
- performing, by a hardware computer system, OPC on the target design based on the determined one or more pattern failures;
- and
- outputting an electronic representation of the corrected target design for creating the pattern as provided by a patterning device of the lithographic process.
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon which, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to implement a method of performing optical proximity correction (OPC) on a target design for a lithographic process, the method comprising:
- obtaining an optical system heating model that accounts for effects of optical system heating in the lithographic process;
- obtaining a set of process window conditions associated with the lithographic process;
- determining one or more pattern failures across the set of process window conditions using the optical system heating model;
- performing OPC on the target design based on the determined one or more pattern failures;
- and
- outputting an electronic representation of the corrected target design for creating the pattern as provided by a patterning device of the lithographic process.
A system, comprising:
- a hardware computer;
- and
- a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the computer, cause the computer to:
- determine one or more pattern failures across a set of process window conditions associated with a lithographic process using an optical system heating model that accounts for effects of optical system heating in the lithographic process;
- perform optical proximity correction (OPC) on a target design of the lithographic process based on the determined one or more pattern failures;
- and
- output an electronic representation of the corrected target design for creating the pattern as provided by a patterning device of the lithographic process.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.