Product Briefing Outline: SII Nano Technology has
launched "SmartMRC" mask rule checker software package that is designed
to be used for mask data verification as part of the requirement for
manufacturing and inspection of advanced photomasks. SmartMRC was
jointly developed with Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. and will be
available from April 2006.
Problem: The aggressive OPC and advanced RET
techniques are now used to deal with the lithographical limitations due
to the ever finer feature sizes in recent semiconductor devices. As the
number of fine patterns increases and the volume of data grow, the
quality requirements on photomasks are becoming demanding. This causes
longer times for mask manufacturing and inspection, which may increase
costs and delivery times.
Solution: SmartMRC is
a software tool to detect potential problems in the mask manufacturing
and inspection processes by extracting and checking the mask design
data prior to the manufacture. This advanced data verification reduces
mask manufacturing defects and falsely detected errors during mask
inspection that in turn helps to reduce mask costs and production
times.
Applications: Advanced photomasks 100nm and below.
Platform: SmartMRC employs a limit check function for mask drawing and inspection,
SEM
measurement point extraction for verifying pattern uniformity in the
manufactured mask and internal data checks during mask data conversion
and mask data substitution. Enables direct input of the mask drawing
data without GDS format conversion and is available with a distributed
computing option for linear speedup by parallel processing with a few
tens of processors.
Availability: April 2006 onwards