A New Method of Implementing Hierarchical OPC

For emerging deep-subwavelength lithography technologies (90 nm and following) the data volume and the complexity of optical proximity correction (OPC) have increased dramatically. This has added to the total cost of IC manufacturing and become an increasingly critical issue in optical lithography. In this paper, we present a new method of implementing hierarchical OPC to explore its merits in runtime saving. The interactions and propagating corrections between neighboring cells during OPC have been discussed and appropriate solutions have been proposed. Segment-moving map (SMM) and dynamic correction are brought forward for the first time to identify the interacting regions in hierarchical OPC and automatically adjust the corrections in these regions. Furthermore, total edge placement error (EPE) is calculated in controlled experiments to test the accuracy of this method. Results have shown that approximately 5times speedup has been achieved with similar accuracy when compared with the conventional OPC method