Design for e-beam: design insights for direct-write maskless lithography

Aki Fujimura, M. Warren Montgomery, Wilhelm Maurer
2010 Photomask Technology 2010  
Designers always want maximum freedom in design, but they understand that chips have to yield and at a reasonable cost. The strong ecosystem support of restricted design rules to make 193i workable for sub-30nm nodes is evidence of this. In direct write e-beam, there are design insights that lead to a tangible improvement in throughout while minimizing the restrictions on the designer. It turns out that a smaller number of primitive cells in a standard cell methodology can enable data
more » ... n for multi-beam systems, and enable faster write times for character projection in VSB-based multiple column machines. This requires a co-design of the standard cell library with the stencil mask (either virtual or real) that goes into the machine. This co-design step is required only once per library and not on a design-by-design basis, thus minimizing the impact on designers. 10-20X speedups in e-beam throughput depending on layer are seen in typical layout examples for character projection machines.
doi:10.1117/12.868483 fatcat:dqj5tzhm2bhnrb2mzvjf3ou6dq