Renesas Electronics Corporation

Hitachi, Ltd.

Renesas Technology Corp.

Akemi Moniwa

Hiroshi Fukuda

Mitsuru Okuno

Akira Imai

Ayumi Minamide

Norio Hasegawa

Tsuneo Terasawa

Fumio Murai

Katsuya Hayano

Shinji Okazaki

Manabu Ishibashi

Takuya Hagiwara

Junjiro Sakai

Jiro Yamamoto

Mineko Adachi

Keitaro Katabuchi

A manufacturing method of a photomask by which a resist pattern corresponding to a pattern with designed values can be formed, a method for optical proximity correction, and a manufacturing method of a semiconductor device are provided. Proximity design features that are close to each other and estimated to violate a mask rule check are extracted. In the proximity design features, correction prohibited regions where optical proximity correction is not carried out are set based on the distance between the features obtained from the extracted proximity design features and the resolution of an exposure device. Optical proximity correction is carried out on the proximity design features with the correction prohibited regions excluded to obtain corrected proximity patterns. A predetermined mask material is patterned by carrying out electron beam lithography based on the corrected proximity pattern data.

Manufacturing method of photomask, method for optical proximity correction, and manufacturing method of semiconductor device

A photomask is provided which can have a large depth of focus even if four main features are annularly arranged at random. The photomask has four annularly arranged main features based on design information of a circuit feature to be formed on a wafer, and a sub-feature is laid at an intersection point of two diagonal lines of a quadrangle formed by four vertices inside the four main features in order to increase a depth of focus of an exposure feature. Therefore, the depth of focus can be increased even if the main features are not arranged at a constant pitch.

Photomask, manufacturing apparatus and method of semiconductor device using the same, and photomask feature layout method

A method of forming a pattern including a first pattern portion having a first minimum dimension and a second pattern portion having a second minimum dimension includes a first exposure step of performing exposure using a Levenson-type mask and a second exposure step of performing exposure using a half tone-type mask. When second minimum dimension is 1.3 time or more than the first minimum dimension, the exposure amount of the second exposure step is set to be equal to or smaller than the exposure amount of the first exposure step.

Pattern formation method using levenson-type mask and method of manufacturing levenson-type mask

A photomask is disclosed which can suppress deterioration of the depth of focus even in the case where main features are arranged randomly. Sub-features are replaced by a quadrangular sub-feature located inside an external quadrangle which includes as part of its outer periphery the outermost portions of the original sub-features. The sub-feature after the replacement is preferably in a square shape and the length of one side thereof is determined in accordance with the length of the associated external quadrangle. A central position of the sub-feature after the replacement is preferably coincident with the center of the external quadrangle or the center of gravity of the region which includes the original sub-features.

Photomask, apparatus for manufacturing semiconductor device having the photomask, and method of manufacturing semiconductor device using the photomask

Pattern formation method using Levenson-type mask and method of manufacturing Levenson-type mask

A method is provided for solving a problem that the fine processing property is degraded by an increase of a current applied to complementarily divided masks in an electron beam projection process. In the method, the complementarily divided masks used for electron projection are used whereby one mask is used for patterns requiring high dimensional accuracy and another is used for other patterns. Consequently, it is possible to lower the current applied to the patterns requiring high dimensional accuracy to realize high printing accuracy. In addition, the highly accurate patterns can be formed at a high throughput.

Semiconductor device and manufacturing method thereof

There is provided a method of fabricating a semiconductor device whereby fine patterns are formed with high dimensional accuracy by means of multiple exposures, using a phase shift mask and a trim mask. Phases are periodically assigned to shifter patterns within a given range from patterns generated with the phase shift mask, respectively.

Method for fabricating a semiconductor device

To provide a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device for manufacturing a minute pattern with high accuracy using a stencil mask. An input layout data is classified into rectangles according to pattern width or the like, a boundary is created that divides a periphery or an inside of each classified graphics, an input pattern is fractionized by the boundary, and a complementary mask with fractionized patterns on both sides of the boundary distributed into different layers is used to form a pattern.

Method of manufacturing semiconductor device

A photomask used for printing a mask pattern by projection optics, in which a main pattern formed of a transparent area is provided in a semitransparent area formed of a semitransparent film and a phase shifter, and the phase angles of light beams passing through respective areas are different from each other substantially by 180.degree.. The photomask is intended to prevent a reduction in a production yield due to a resolution failure of the photomask, and to prevent generation of an unnecessary projected image. In this photomask, a transparent auxiliary pattern having the same phase angle of light as that of the transparent area is disposed around a main pattern formed of the transparent area, and a distance D between the center or a desired center line of the main pattern and that of the auxiliary pattern satisfies the relationship of D=b.lambda./NAm , where NAm is a mask-side numerical aperture of a projection lens, .lambda. is a wavelength of exposure light, and &lt;b&gt; is a coefficient in the range of 1.35&lt;b.ltoreq.1.9.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Akemi Moniwa