Applying photolithography-friendly design to e-beam direct writing in 65-nm node and beyond

It is commonly known that maskless lithography is the most effective technology to reduce costs and shorten the time need for recent photo-mask making techniques. In mass production, however, lithography using photo-masks is used because that method has high productivity. Therefore a solution is to use maskless lithography to make prototypes and use optical lithography for volume production. On the other hand, using an exposure technology that is different from that used for mass production causes different physical phenomena to occur in the lithography process, and different images are formed. These differences have an effect on the characteristics of the semiconductor device being made. An issue arises because the chip characteristics are different for the sample chip and the final chip of the same product. This issue also requires other processes to be changed besides switching to the lithography process. In our previous paper, we reported on new developments in an electron-beam exposure data-generating system for making printed images of a different exposure source correspond to each other in lithographic printing systems, which are electron beam lithography and photolithography. In this paper, we discuss whether the feasibility of this methodology has been demonstrated for use in a production environment. Patterns which are generated with our method are complicated. To apply the method to a production environment we needed a breakthrough, and we overcame some difficult issues.