Technology mapping technique for throughput enhancement of character projection equipment

The character projection is utilized for maskless lithography and is a potential for the future photomask manufacture. The drawback of the character projection is its low throughput and leads to a price rise of ICs. This paper discusses a technology mapping technique for enhancing the throughput of the character projection. The number of EB shots to draw an entire chip determines the fabrication time for the chip. Reduction of the number of EB shots, therefore, increases the throughput of character projection equipment and reduces the cost to produce ICs. Our technology mapping technique aims to reduce the number of EB shots to draw an entire chip for increasing the throughput of character projection equipment. Our technique treats the number of EB shots as an objective to minimize. Comparing with an conventional technology mapping, our technology mapping technique achieved 19.6% reduction of the number of EB shots without any performance degradation of ICs. Moreover, our technology mapping technique achieved 48.8% reduction of the number of EB shots under no performance constraints. Our technique is easy for both IC designers and equipment developers to adopt because it is a software approach with no additional modification on character projection equipment.