| Hajime Kawano | EB Lithography Systems Design Dept. Naka Div., |
| Yasuhiro Kadowaki | EB Lithography Systems Design Deparment, Naka Div., |
| Kazuyoshi Oonuki | Software Design Dept., Naka Div., |
| Hiroya Ohta | Advanced Technology Research Dept., Central Research Lab., |
Semiconductor manufacturing equipment requires both high accuracy and high productivity at the same time. The same can be said for mask writing technology used in KrF or ArF UV (ultraviolet) lithography. A new series of the EB (electron beam) mask lithography system developed by Hitachi Group has high-accuracy CD (critical dimension) controllability obtained with a new electron optical system, new compensation technology, higher precision stage and temperature control technology, as well as high positioning controllability, thus achieving a higher degree of accuracy. In addition, to cope with the huge, terabyte-order data volume that comes with miniaturization, a SAN (storage area network) system was adopted to unify management of previously localized data and to expedite data management and conversion processing to reduce the burden on the system user. Furthermore, higher current density and faster deflection calculation technology can be applied to realize high system throughput for the current generation of mask production lines which are the bulk of existing products, as well as to production systems in the 65-nm node generation.
electron beam, lithography, proximity effect, OPC, SAN
