International Business Machines Corporation

James E Stuart

Virginia M Chung

Joseph B Frei

A methodology and apparatus for extracting repeated data from a large body of data for compaction and reproduction by step-and-repeat operations includes extraction of data based on common parameters and a variable parameter. Lists are formed from the extracted data after ordering and repeat displacements are computed. Maximum displacement or delta is also computed and compared based on the range of addresses in the lists and a minimum number of step-and-repeat operations which can be done with a command which represents a compaction of data. A plurality of compressed data coding formats are provided and optimally applied during operation of the invention.

Method and apparatus for automatically recognizing repeated shapes for

In electron beam lithography, an apparatus and method decompose rectangles at the exterior of a desired electron beam exposure pattern into portions having a substantially constant environment. This process also includes sorting of rectangles into bands in order of addresses of the rectangles and the assignment of labels or tags to the resulting rectangles indicating the edge(s) of the rectangle at which cuts were made to form the rectangle. When these rectangles are further decomposed by increment cutting and processes to receive exposure doses corrected by mutual proximity effects, including recombination of rectangles having the same assigned exposure dose, improved location of cut boundaries is achieved. Overexposure and resultant blooming of the pattern is prevented and exposure dose is assigned with higher accuracy since any averaging of exposure dose will be over a region having a substantially constant environment of neighboring shapes. Additionally, by ordering of the shapes, and cutting (with recombination) in plural steps, data carried forward in subsequent processing is reduced and accumulation of exposure correction information is facilitated.

System and method for preparing shape data for proximity correction

A method of converting circuit design shapes into optimized numerical control (NC) data for controlling an electron beam (e-beam) exposure system. During post processing of a circuit design layout, shapes with angled edges are covered or filled with rectangles and triangular trapezoidal or paralellograms called FILLSHAPES. Whenever a FILLSHAPE is created, it is as close to the preferred size as possible to increase the likelihood of creating duplicate FILLSHAPEs. A proximity correction value which is calculated for an equivalent rectangle is applied to the FILLSHAPE. After proximity correction, groups of identical FILLSHAPES and User-Defined Macros (UDM's) are created. A summary record is generated for each group. A weight factor is calculated for each group and stored in the summary record. The summary records are sorted according to weight factor. A FILLSHAPE Defined Macro FDM) or UDM is stored in the e-beam tool's macro buffer in order of sorted summary record until every Defined Macro (DM) is stored in the macro buffer or the Macro buffer is full. When the design shapes are encoded in the pattern buffer, fill rectangles are encoded as NC data until a FILLSHAPE or Macro is encountered. The macro buffer is checked for a DM corresponding to the encountered FILLSHAPE or Macro.

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Hopewell Junction, NY, United States of America

James E Stuart