Manufacturability of Electronic Chips

If the size of features on a microchip are of order of or smaller than the wavelength of the light used in their manufacture, manufacturability of the chip suffers due to diffraction. The degrading effect of diffraction can be handled by biasing masks used for patterning the chips and by optimizing optical system (stepper) parameters. In this paper, algorithms for biasing masks and optimizing stepper parameters are designed and implemented. The algorithms are efficient and feasible for industrial size masks.