A Frequency Domain Self-Attention Guided Multi-Scale Inverse Lithography Technology
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摘要: 光刻制程中的光学邻近效应(OPE)会导致晶圆上的打印图像偏离设计版图,需要对光刻掩膜进行光学邻近校正(OPC)。该文提出一种频域自注意力机制引导的多尺度逆光刻技术(FMS-ILT)用于掩膜优化。FMS-ILT采用基于残差卷积的多尺度编码器-解码器结构,通过残差连接融合局部细节与全局特征,并在编码器末端引入频域自注意力机制,将动态注意力与频域全局建模能力相结合,自适应关注影响打印图像质量的关键信息。在预训练阶段,模型通过掩膜生成与目标图像重构增强物理一致性;在主训练阶段,进一步结合光刻仿真对掩膜进行精细优化。实验结果表明,FMS-ILT的平均$ \mathcal{L}2 $损失较基准模型降低2%–107%,平均边缘放置误差(EPE)降低47%–
1115 %,显示了FMS-ILT方法在优化掩膜方面的显著优势。Abstract:Objective Optical Proximity Effects (OPE) in lithographic processes cause printed patterns on wafers to deviate from target layouts, necessitating Optical Proximity Correction (OPC) through mask optimization prior to exposure. Traditional rule-based OPC methods suffer from significant accuracy degradation when handling complex layouts, while model-based OPC approaches incur high computational cost. In recent years, deep learning--based methods have been introduced to accelerate mask generation; however, their limited receptive fields hinder effective modeling of long-range optical interference effects, thereby constraining optimization accuracy. To address these challenges, this work proposes a Frequency Domain Self-Attention Guided Multi-Scale Inverse Lithography Technology (FMS-ILT), which jointly models local geometric details and global optical interactions, leading to improved printed image fidelity, edge placement accuracy, and process robustness. Methods FMS-ILT adopts a residual convolution--based multi-scale encoder--decoder architecture, where shallow layers extract fine-grained geometric features such as edges and corners, while deeper layers capture large-scale layout context. Residual blocks and multi-level skip connections are employed to preserve high-frequency information and stabilize training. To overcome the limited receptive field of spatial convolutions, a Frequency Domain Self-Attention Mechanism (FSAM) is introduced at the encoder output. Global feature interactions are enabled via the Fourier transform, and the resulting attention responses are mapped back to the spatial domain through the inverse Fourier transform to adaptively reweight feature representations. A two-stage training strategy is adopted. During pretraining, a dual-branch structure is used to jointly learn mask geometry and imaging consistency, providing physically meaningful initialization. During main training, lithography simulation is applied under nominal, maximum, and minimum process conditions to further refine mask optimization under physical constraints. Results and Discussions The comparison results with baseline models are summarized in Tables 2 and3 . Our method is set as the reference (Ratio = 1), and all experiments are conducted on the LithoBench dataset. In terms of overall imaging $ \mathcal{L}2 $ error, our method achieves the lowest value of 19,998, outperforming baseline models by 2%–107%. For the process robustness metric Process Variation Band (PVB), GAN-OPC obtains the best result of 19,156, which is 31% lower than ours; however, its $ \mathcal{L}2 $ error and EPE are 107% and1115 % higher, respectively, indicating an imbalance between imaging fidelity and edge accuracy. The remaining baseline models exhibit PVB performance comparable to ours. Regarding Edge Placement Error (EPE), our method also demonstrates a significant advantage, achieving an average EPE of 1.95, which is 47%–1115 % lower than the baselines. These improvements can be attributed to three key factors: (1) a multi-scale encoder–decoder fusion mechanism that effectively integrates local and global features, (2) the combination of attention mechanisms and frequency-domain operations to guide the model toward critical regions, and (3) a dual-branch pretraining strategy that injects physical priors into the network. With these modules jointly contributing, FMS-ILT achieves more balanced and superior performance in imaging fidelity, process stability, and edge accuracy.Conclusions This work proposes a Frequency Domain Self-Attention Guided Multi-Scale Inverse Lithography Technology (FMS-ILT). The model adopts a residual convolution--based multi-scale encoder--decoder architecture to extract rich spatial features and incorporates a frequency-domain self-attention mechanism to jointly model local geometric details and global optical interference characteristics. A two-stage training strategy is employed. In the pretraining stage, a dual-branch task of mask generation and target image reconstruction is used to enhance the physical consistency between the mask and the printed image. In the main training stage, lithography simulation is introduced to further improve imaging accuracy and process robustness. Experimental results on the public LithoBench dataset demonstrate that FMS-ILT achieves superior performance in terms of $ \mathcal{L}2 $, PVB, and EPE metrics, effectively improving printed image quality and providing a feasible and efficient solution for computational lithography. -
Key words:
- Mask optimization /
- Inverse lithography /
- Frequency Domain Self-Attention /
- Multi-Scale
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表 1 LithoBench 掩模优化数据集统计
MetalSet ViaSet StdMetal StdContact 训练集 14,824 104,733 0 163 测试集 1,648 11,642 271 165 表 2 掩膜优化对比结果
数据集 GAN-OPC [16] Neural-ILT [17] DAMO [18] 本文方法 $ \mathcal{L}2 $ PVB EPE 时间(s) $ \mathcal{L}2 $ PVB EPE 时间(s) $ \mathcal{L}2 $ PVB EPE 时间(s) $ \mathcal{L}2 $ PVB EPE 时间(s) Metalset 43414 41200 8.7 0.070 36670 42666 7.3 0.050 32579 41173 5.4 0.055 32384 40142 3.6 0.066 ViaSet 14767 6686 8.3 0.160 12723 8537 6.2 0.059 5081 9962 0 0.162 4526 7936 0 0.062 StdMetal 25929 23715 4.6 0.004 20045 23548 2.4 0.005 16120 23796 0.2 0.006 17886 22738 1.3 0.009 StdContact 81378 4931 73.2 0.003 25422 41537 3.2 0.003 50445 35673 26.7 0.004 25683 40234 2.9 0.007 平均值 41372 19156 23.7 0.059 23715 29072 4.8 0.029 26056 27651 8 0.057 19998 27763 1.95 0.036 比率 2.07 0.69 12.15 1.63 1.19 1.05 2.46 0.81 1.30 1.00 4.10 1.57 1 1 1 1 数据集 CFNO [19] MultiILT [20] 本文方法 $ \mathcal{L}2 $ PVB EPE 时间(s) $ \mathcal{L}2 $ PVB EPE 时间(s) $ \mathcal{L}2 $ PVB EPE 时间(s) Metalset 47814 46131 6.2 0.061 27272 43304 2.2 - 32384 40142 3.6 0.066 ViaSet 8949 9890 0.1 0.139 5357 9179 0.6 - 4526 7936 0 0.062 StdMetal 26809 26814 4.2 0.010 13814 24928 0.03 - 17886 22738 1.3 0.009 StdContact 70740 17960 55.1 0.006 34813 39997 8.6 - 25683 40234 2.9 0.007 平均值 38578 25196 18 0.054 20314 29352 2.86 - 19998 27763 1.95 0.036 比率 1.93 0.91 9.23 1.49 1.02 1.06 1.47 - 1 1 1 1 表 3 消融实验对比结果
模型 MetalSet StMetal $ \mathcal{L}2 $ PVB EPE $ \mathcal{L}2 $ PVB EPE (-)目标图重构模块 46366 47416 9.0 19155 22123 2.4 (-)残差连接 48700 39967 17.4 23874 22974 4.4 (-)频域自注意力模块 36536 41123 6.3 20217 24812 1.9 完整模型 32384 40142 3.6 17396 22738 1.3 -
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