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

doi:10.1587/transfun.E96.A.2458

Special Section on VLSI Design and CAD Algorithms

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

Author information

Keywords: electron beam direct writing, character projection, VIA, interconnect, routing

JOURNAL RESTRICTED ACCESS

2013 Volume E96.A Issue 12 Pages 2458-2466

DOI https://doi.org/10.1587/transfun.E96.A.2458

Details

Abstract

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.

Corresponding author

Register with J-STAGE for free!