Coulomb interaction effect correction in e-beam block exposure lithography

In e-beam lithography technologies, a blur of an e-beam increases as the e-beam current increases, due to the CIE (Coulomb Interaction Effect). This phenomenon is significant in such writing strategies as block exposure or cell projection e-beam lithography where fine patterns must be delineated with large e-beam current. Resulting problems are resolution degradations and pattern size variations. This paper presents a method to incorporate the CIE into the PEC (Proximity Effect Correction) technique so that the pattern size variations due to CIE are corrected.