The exploration of curvilinear mask manufacturability and wafer printability

This paper explores the manufacturability of curvilinear masks and their impact on wafer printability. With continuous scaling demanding tighter control of critical dimension (CD) specifications, optimizing solutions through collaboration among electronic design automation (EDA), mask shops, and wafer fabs is crucial. This study investigates the benefits of curvilinear masks created from ILT with varying MRC rules, pattern fidelity control at corners, and coverage of model-based assist features (MBAF) for mask manufacturability and wafer printability. The correlation between wafer-level lithographic performance and curvilinear ILT mask complexity is also presented.