Efficient and rigorous three-dimensional model for optical lithography simulation

Lucas, Kevin; Tanabe, Hiroyoshi; Strojwas, Andrzej J.

doi:10.1364/josaa.13.002187

Cited by 67 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The Waveguide solver is based on an extended and optimised RCWA (rigorous coupled wave analysis) approach. A detailed description of the method can be found in [35]. An exemplary simulation model for a filter structure covered by air is shown in the above image in figure 5(b).…”

Section: Optical Characterisation and Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large area manufacturing of plasmonic colour filters using substrate conformal imprint lithography

et al. 2017

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This work presents the large area fabrication of plasmonic colour filters consisting of subwavelength apertures in aluminium films of different thicknesses. Wafer-scale pattern transfer was realized by a soft lithography technique (substrate conformal imprint lithography). The fabricated colour filters have an active area of up to 145 cm2 which presents a considerable increase compared to previously published results. In addition to experimental investigations, simulations of the transmission behaviour were performed using a rigorous electromagnetic field solver based on an extended RCWA approach. Furthermore, the use of a spin-coated cover layer consisting of the UV-curable hybrid polymer OrmoComp® instead of often applied PECVD-SiO2 was investigated.

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Section: Optical Characterisation and Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large area manufacturing of plasmonic colour filters using substrate conformal imprint lithography

et al. 2017

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“…To perform the simulations, we used two lithography simulation software packages, namely, Sentaurus Lithography (S-Litho) from Synopsys and EM-SUITE from Panoramic Technology Inc. EM-Suite was used to perform simulations implementing the FDTD algorithm 19,20 while S-Litho was used to perform simulations implementing the FDTD as well as the waveguide algorithms 21 for the rigorous modeling of EUV masks. The optical and imaging parameters used for the simulations were chosen to match the parameters used for the AIT imaging, which were 13.5 nm wavelength radiation incident on the mask at an angle of 6 degrees, disk-fill illumination with a r value of 0.2, and a mask-side numerical aperture of 0.0875 (0.35, 4Â wafer-side).…”

Section: B Comparing the Simulation And Ait Through-focus Aerial Imagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Level-set multilayer growth model for predicting printability of buried native extreme ultraviolet mask defects

Upadhyaya

Basavalingappa

Herbol

et al. 2015

Journal of Vacuum Science &Amp; Technology B, Nanotechnology and Microelectronics: Materials, Processing, Measurement, and Phen

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The availability of defect-free masks is considered to be a critical issue for enabling extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) as the next generation technology. Since completely defect-free masks will be hard to achieve, it is essential to have a good understanding of the printability of EUV mask defects. In this work, two native mask blank defects were characterized using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and cross-section transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and the defect printability of the characterized native mask defects was evaluated using simulations implementing the finitedifference time-domain and the waveguide algorithms. The simulation results were compared with through-focus aerial images obtained at the SEMATECH Berkeley Actinic Inspection Tool (AIT), an EUV mask-imaging microscope at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The authors found agreement between the through-focus simulation results and the AIT results. To model the Mo/Si multilayer growth over the native defects, which served as the input for the defect printability simulations, a level-set technique was used to predict the evolution of the multilayer disruption over the defect. Unlike other models that assume a constant flux of atoms (of materials to be deposited) coming from a single direction, this model took into account the direction and incident fluxes of the materials to be deposited, as well as the rotation of the mask substrate, to accurately simulate the actual deposition conditions existing inside the ion beam deposition tool. The modeled multilayer growth was compared to the cross-section TEM images through the defects, as well as to the AFM scans for the given defects, and a good agreement was observed between them.

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“…Waveguide methods have been of great interest because they can solve Maxwell's equations fast and accurately especially for periodical dielectric structures [2][3] [4]. Most waveguide simulators follow the same procedure: first the dielectric material is split into thin layers with uniform dielectric functions in the splitting direction, then the dielectric functions in each layer are expanded by Fourier series in x and y directions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…METRO-3D computes x and y components of vector potential under Lorentz gauge in each layer. To solve for the eigenvalues and eigenvectors, according to Tanabe and Lucas [4], the governing equations for A x and A y are:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Propagation of EM waves in axial symmetric structures and its implication for 3D rigorous lithography process simulation

Zhu

Strojwas

2004

SPIE Proceedings

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Amid the different approaches to rigorously model the scattering of electromagnetic waves in sub-wavelength photolithography process, waveguide methods have been proven to be accurate and efficient. While totally different from the time domain methods such as FEM and TDFD, waveguide methods simultaneously compute diffraction of the incident plane waves with different incidence angles by a periodical dielectric structure. EM modes inside dielectric layers are solved for by decoupling the eigen-system and the electromagnetic field boundary conditions between each two adjacent layers are applied to stitch the modes and obtain the full scattering matrix. It is clear that the number of orders of the plane waves under consideration directly affects the accuracy of a waveguide simulator. However, in a 3-D simulation, simulation time and memory usage increase drastically with the increase of the number of orders. These limitations prevent waveguide methods from being applied to large layout patterns that require higher simulation orders. Since many cases under study in lithography process optimization and layout printability analysis are actually axial-symmetric about both x and y axes, it is possible to use this symmetry to simplify the calculation. Based on our definitions of the four fundamental groups of symmetric and anti-symmetric functions and the operations between these symmetric groups, we have made some fundamental discoveries of the waveguide propagating behaviors inside symmetric dielectric structures. In this paper, we will describe our new rigorous theory to decompose the propagating waves in a symmetric layer into four symmetric and anti-symmetric transmitting plane wave groups. Each group can be directly stitched to the next layer without losing symmetry or anti-symmetry. Furthermore, any form of incident waves can be reorganized into the above four plane wave groups, so can the reflective and refraction fields. We have shown that by using this field decomposition technique, we can compute scattering of the four smaller diffraction mode groups separately and the computational complexity will be greatly reduced as compared with the full mode simulation. We have developed a new version of the 3-D simulator, METRO, which incorporated this new method and achieved very high computational efficiency. For example, a 33 by 33-order, double precision simulation will only require 300M bytes memory and take less than 15 minutes without any loss of accuracy on a 1G processor compared with 1.7G memory usage and 10 hours simulating time on the same processor without symmetric simplification [1].

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Efficient and rigorous three-dimensional model for optical lithography simulation

Cited by 67 publications

References 16 publications

Large area manufacturing of plasmonic colour filters using substrate conformal imprint lithography

Large area manufacturing of plasmonic colour filters using substrate conformal imprint lithography

Level-set multilayer growth model for predicting printability of buried native extreme ultraviolet mask defects

Propagation of EM waves in axial symmetric structures and its implication for 3D rigorous lithography process simulation

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