Investigation of local registration performance of IMS Nanofabrication’s Multi-Beam Mask Writer

Reticles for manufacturing upcoming 10nm and 7nm Logic devices will become very complex, no matter whether 193nm water immersion lithography will continue as main stream production path or EUV lithography will be able to take over volume production of critical layers for the 7nm node. The economic manufacturing of future masks for 193i, EUV and imprint lithography with further increasing complexity drives the need for multi-beam mask writing as this technology can overcome the influence of complexity on write time of today’s common variable shape beam writers. Local registration of the multi-beam array is a critical component which greatly differs from variable shape beam systems. In this paper we would like to present the local registration performance of the IMS Multi-Beam Mask Writer system and the metrology tools that enable the characterization optimization.