Throughput compensation through optical proximity correction for realization of an extreme-ultraviolet pellicle

The absorption of extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) pellicle could be the most critical problem because the EUV source power is still not good enough for achieving mass production. We found that the transmission loss due to the EUV pellicle could be compensated through proper optical proximity correction (OPC) of a pellicled mask. Patterning results of OPCed masks with different transmission pellicles are shown for various 1D and 2D patterns. From the results, it is clearly shown that we do not need to increase the dose to avoid the throughput loss even if a pellicle which has 80 % one-pass transmission is used. Therefore, the EUV pellicle manufacturing would be much easier because we can use much thicker film with higher absorption.