E-beam control data compaction system and method

Abstract

A system and method for exposing a radiation sensitive layer to one or more repetitious design cells. Each design cell includes at least one design shape on at least one buildlevel. Each shape represents a circuit shape, or part of a circuit shape on an integrated circuit layer in a circuit on an integrated circuit chip. For each buildlevel: the design is parceled into units that contain approximately the same optimum number of vertices; and for each parcel: Each design cell occurrence, or transform, is examined to determine whether it has proximity effect commonality with other cell transforms (a common environment) and, based on that determination, the cell transform is placed into one of three groups, Macro Candidates, Nested Candidates, and Unnested Candidates. In each Macro Candidate and Nested Candidate any overlapping shapes are combined, or unioned, to form a single shape and, then, the shapes are reconstructed (filled) with rectangles (fill rectangles). Each Macro Candidate design cell is proximity corrected for forward and backward scattering, and the result is placed in a Macro Buffer. Each Nested Candidate design cell is proximity corrected for forward scattering. Nested Candidates are unnested and merged with the Unnested Candidates. The unnested shapes are proximity corrected, former Nested Candidates are proximity corrected for backward scattering and former Unnested Candidates are proximity Corrected for forward and backward scattering. The proximity corrected unnested shapes are stored in a pattern buffer. Finally, the proximity corrected shapes are passed from the pattern buffer and the macro buffer to an electron beam (E-beam) tool as Numerical Control (NC) data.