Abstract
Illumination source optimization (SO) in optical lithography is generally performed under a simulation model that does not consider critical effects such as the vectorial nature of light and mask topography. When a numerical aperture becomes large and the critical dimension reaches subwavelength, the prediction of this model generally fails; therefore, the previous works based on this model become inaccurate. In order to correctly compute SO, we first propose a new source pattern representation method that has moderate parameter variations but remains complete in solution space. Then we develop a derivative-free optimization (DFO) method to optimize these parameters under a rigorous simulation model. Unlike gradient-based techniques, DFO methods do not require a closed-form formulation of the model and are independent of the form of cost function.
© 2014 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Zhiyang Song, Xu Ma, Jie Gao, Jie Wang, Yanqiu Li, and Gonzalo R. Arce
Opt. Express 22(12) 14180-14198 (2014)
Xu Ma, Chunying Han, Yanqiu Li, Lisong Dong, and Gonzalo R. Arce
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 30(1) 112-123 (2013)
Jia Li and Edmund Y. Lam
Opt. Express 22(8) 9471-9485 (2014)