Accelerate OPC convergence with new iteration control methodology

ABSTRACT

 A dilemmatic trade-off that all OPC engineers are facing everyday is the convergence of the OPC result and the control of the OPC iteration times. Theoretically, infinite times of OPC iterations are needed to achieve a convergent and stable correction result. But actually there should always be a cut-off for the iteration time, for turnaround- time is always an important criteria for IC fabs. But considering the design layout becomes more complicated and pattern density becomes higher with the shrinkage of the critical dimension, fragmentation control during the OPC procedure is also becoming more and more sophisticated. Thus, to achieve a convergent correction result for all OPC fragments within limited correction iteration times now becomes a big challenge to OPC engineers. This work presents our study in a new OPC iteration control methodology. It can help to find an algorithm that always converges, and reduce the excessive use of parameter setting, commands and other involvement by the user. With this, we can reduce the run time required to obtain a convergent OPC solution.