High-Throughput Electron Beam Direct Writing of VIA Layers by Character Projection with One-Dimensional VIA Characters

Rimon IKENO  Takashi MARUYAMA  Satoshi KOMATSU  Tetsuya IIZUKA  Makoto IKEDA  Kunihiro ASADA  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences   Vol.E96-A   No.12   pp.2458-2466
Publication Date: 2013/12/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1337
DOI: 10.1587/transfun.E96.A.2458
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on VLSI Design and CAD Algorithms)
Category: Physical Level Design
Keyword: 
electron beam direct writing,  character projection,  VIA,  interconnect,  routing,  

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Summary: 
Character projection (CP) is a high-speed mask-less exposure technique for electron-beam direct writing (EBDW). In CP exposure of VIA layers, higher throughput is realized if more VIAs are exposed in each EB shot, but it will result in huge number of VIA characters to cover arbitrary VIA arrangements. We adopt one-dimensional VIA arrays as the basic CP character architecture to increase VIA numbers in an EB shot while saving the stencil area by superposed character arrangement. In addition, CP throughput is further improved by layout constraints on the VIA placement in the detail routing phase. Our experimental results proved the feasibility of our exposure strategy in the practical CP use in 14nm lithography.