Patent · US Active

Method for fast estimation of lithographic binding patterns in an integrated circuit layout

US8234603B2 · kind B2 · utility

3Cited by
7References
25Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateJul 14, 2010
Grant dateJul 31, 2012
Priority date
Expiry dateJul 25, 2030

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F30/398
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

The present invention provides a lithographic difficulty metric that is a function of an energy ratio factor that includes a ratio of hard-to-print energy to easy-to-print energy of the diffraction orders along an angular coordinate θi of spatial frequency space, an energy entropy factor comprising energy entropy of said diffraction orders along said angular coordinate θi, a phase entropy factor comprising phase entropy of said diffraction orders along said angular coordinate θi, and a total energy entropy factor comprising total energy entropy of said diffraction orders. The hard-to-print energy includes energy of the diffraction orders at values of the normalized radial coordinates r of spatial frequency space in a neighborhood of r=0 and in a neighborhood of r=1, and the easy-to-print energy includes energy of the diffraction orders located at intermediate values of normalized radial coordinates r between the neighborhood of r=0 and the neighborhood of r=1. The value of the lithographic difficulty metric may be used to identify patterns in a design layout that are binding patterns in an optimization computation. The lithographic difficulty metric may be used to design integrated…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.