Hybrid OPC technique using model based and rule-based flows

To transfer an electronic circuit from design to silicon, a lot of stages are involved in between. As technology evolves, the design shapes are getting closer to each other. Since the wavelength of the lithography process didn't get any better than 193nm, optical interference is a problem that needs to be accounted for by using Optical Proximity Correction (OPC) algorithms. In earlier technologies, simple OPC was applied to the design based on spatial rules. This is not the situation in the recent technologies anymore, since more optical interference took place with the intensive scaling down of the designs. Model-based OPC is a better solution now to produce accurate results, but this comes at the cost of the increased run time. Electronic Design Automation (EDA) companies compete to offer tools that provide both accuracy and run time efficiency. In this paper, we show that optimum usage of some of these tools can ensure OPC accuracy with better run time. The hybrid technique of OPC uses the classic rule-based OPC in a modern fashion to consider the optical parameters, instead of the spatial metrics only. Combined with conventional model-based OPC, the whole flow shows better results in terms of accuracy and run time.