Performance-Based Optical Proximity Correction

Abstract

Optical Proximity Correction (OPC) is an important resolution enhancement technique used in sub-wavelength lithography era. However, it is getting more expensive to implement OPC at each successive technology generation. This thesis presents development and analysis of performance driven OPC frameworks to reduce mask costs and to improve circuit performance matching. A design-process integrated performance-based OPC framework is first developed to generate simpler OPC mask that achieves closer circuit performance over various test cases. Subsequently, a complete device performance-based OPC (DPB-OPC) framework is further generalized and presented. To reduce the run time of full chip DPB-OPC, a library-based DPB-OPC framework is developed to handle the complex synthesized circuit. Finally, a hybrid drive current and capacitance based OPC is proposed to achieve satisfactory co-matching on both drive current and gate capacitance in digital circuit, and therefore improves the matching of path delay.