Proceedings Article | 23 September 2009
Proc. SPIE. 7488, Photomask Technology 2009
KEYWORDS: Metals, Manufacturing, Inspection, Data processing, Design for manufacturing, Photomasks, Optical proximity correction, Data conversion, Electronic design automation, Defect inspection
Mask D2I/ASET has been working to reduce TAT for mask writing and inspection. As a part of this program we have
developed a data flow process for mask manufacturing in which we refer to design intent information in order to reduce
TAT of mask manufacturing processes. We convert design level information "Design Intent (DI)" into priority
information of mask manufacturing data known as "Mask Data Rank (MDR)" so that we can identify and sort out the
importance of reticle patterns from the view point of the design side. As a result, we can reduce mask writing time and
mask inspection time significantly. Our objective is to build efficient data flow conversion system from DI to MDR.
Automatic DI creation flow from EDA tools, and an automatic MDR creation flow from the created DI have already
been established. We extracted design intents (Litho hotspot area, Shield net, Gate channel area, Timing critical net,
Dummy metal fill, Power ground net, etc.) from the database in EDA tools automatically, and converted them into MDR.
In an earlier paper, we had shown that by using this flow, we could achieve TAT reduction in mask writing and mask
inspection for a limited number of design data. In this presentation, we will show TAT reduction results for actual device
design data; we will then discuss related issues and their solutions.
