Layout decomposition co-optimization for hybrid e-beam and multiple patterning lithography

—As the feature size keeps scaling down and the circuit complexity increases rapidly, a more advanced hybrid lithography, which combines multiple patterning and e-beam lithography (EBL), is promising to further enhance the pattern resolution. In this paper, we formulate the layout decomposition problem for this hybrid lithography as a minimum vertex deletion K-partition problem, where K is the number of masks in multiple patterning. Stitch minimization and EBL throughput are considered uniformly by adding a virtual vertex between two feature vertices for each stitch candidate during the conflict graph construction phase. For K = 2, we propose a primaldual (PD) method for solving the underlying minimum odd-cycle cover problem efficiently. In addition, a chain decomposition algorithm is employed for removing all “non-cyclable” edges. Furthermore, we investigate two versions of the PD method, one with planarization and one without. For K > 2, we propose a random-initialized loc...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2015
• Where: ASPDAC
• Authors: Yunfeng Yang, Wai-Shing Luk, Hai Zhou, Changhao Yan, Xuan Zeng, Dian Zhou
• Keywords: ASPDAC 2015, Hardware