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:
Nov. 13, 2012
Filed:
Nov. 29, 2010
Yonchan Ban, Austin, TX (US);
Kevin D. Lucas, Austin, TX (US);
Yonchan Ban, Austin, TX (US);
Kevin D. Lucas, Austin, TX (US);
Synopsys, Inc., Mountain View, CA (US);
Abstract
Methods and apparatuses are described for determining mask layouts for printing a design intent on a wafer using a spacer-is-dielectric self-aligned double-patterning process. A system can determine whether a graph corresponding to a design intent is two-colorable. If the graph is not two-colorable, the system can merge one or more pairs of shapes in the design intent to obtain a modified design intent, so that a modified graph corresponding to the modified design intent is two-colorable. The system can then determine a two-coloring for the modified graph. Next, the system can place one or more core shapes in a mandrel mask layout which correspond to vertices in the modified graph that are associated with a selected color in the two-coloring. The system can then place one or more shapes in a trim mask layout for separating the shapes in the design intent that were merged.