The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 27, 2021
Filed:
Feb. 15, 2019
Asml Netherlands B.v., Veldhoven, NL;
Duan-Fu Stephen Hsu, Fremont, CA (US);
Jingjing Liu, San Jose, CA (US);
Rafael C. Howell, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Xingyue Peng, San Jose, CA (US);
ASML Netherlands B.V., Veldhoven, NL;
Abstract
A method to determine a mask pattern for a patterning device. The method includes obtaining a target pattern to be printed on a substrate, an initial continuous tone image corresponding to the target pattern, a binarization function (e.g., a sigmoid, an arctan, a step function, etc.) configured to transform the initial continuous tone image, and a process model configured to predict a pattern on the substrate from an output of the binarization function; and generating a binarized image having a mask pattern corresponding to the initial continuous tone image by iteratively updating the initial continuous tone image based on a cost function such that the cost function is reduced. The cost function (e.g., EPE) determines a difference between a predicted pattern determined by the process model and the target pattern.