公开(公告)号：US20210048753A1

公开(公告)日：2021-02-18

申请号：US16976492

申请日：2019-02-28

Applicant: ASML NETHERLANDS B.V.

Inventor： Quan ZHANG ,  Been-Der CHENG ,  Rafael C. HOWELL ,  Jing SU ,  Yi ZOU ,  Yen-Wen LU

IPC: G03F7/20 ,  G03F1/36 ,  G03F1/70

Abstract: A method to determine a curvilinear pattern of a patterning device that includes obtaining (i) an initial image of the patterning device corresponding to a target pattern to be printed on a substrate subjected to a patterning process, and (ii) a process model configured to predict a pattern on the substrate from the initial image, generating, by a hardware computer system, an enhanced image from the initial image, generating, by the hardware computer system, a level set image using the enhanced image, and iteratively determining, by the hardware computer system, a curvilinear pattern for the patterning device based on the level set image, the process model, and a cost function, where the cost function (e.g., EPE) determines a difference between a predicted pattern and the target pattern, where the difference is iteratively reduced.