Sub-wavelength lithography places a serious limitation on the conventional ”thin mask” approximation of the field immediately behind the patterned mask. This approximation fails to account for the increasingly important topographical effects of the mask or ”thick mask” effects. This approximation of the photomask near-fields results from the direct application of Kirchhoff Boundary Conditions, ...

A preliminary study on the Noh mask test for analysis of recognition of facial expression was performed. The present study was conducted on 15 normal subjects (mean age: 32 years, SD 9.7 years) as the first step to test for the differences between psychiatric patients and normal subjects. Stimuli were created by photographs of 15 Noh masks at different vertical angles. Subjects were given 12 ta...

Recently, a set of generalized gradient-based optical proximity correction (OPC) optimization methods have been developed to solve for the forward and inverse lithography problems under the thin-mask assumption, where the mask is considered a thin 2D object. However, as the critical dimension printed on the wafer shrinks into the subwavelength regime, thick-mask effects become prevalent, and th...

Shrinkage of VLSI feature size and use of advanced Reticle Enhancement Technologies (RET) in manufacturing such as OPC and PSM have dramatically pushed up cost of mask. For example of a 130nm or 90nm mask set, the mask cost can easily reach one or two million US dollars. Shuttle mask is an effective method to share the mask cost by putting different chips on the same mask. Shuttle mask floorpla...

The beauty of the laryngeal mask is that it forms an air tight seal enclosing the larynx rather than plugging the pharynx, and avoid airway obstruction in the oropharynx. The goal of its development was to create an intermediate form of airway management face mask and endotracheal tube. Indication for its use includes any procedure that would normally involve the use of a face mask. The larynge...

Machine learning is a powerful computer science technique that can derive knowledge from big data and make predictions/decisions. Since nanometer integrated circuits (IC) and manufacturing have extremely high complexity and gigantic data, there is great opportunity to apply and adapt various machine learning techniques in IC physical design and verification. This paper will first give an introd...

This paper reports an automatic method for synthesizing MEMS mask-layouts. This method incorporates a forward simulation of fabrication into a general evolutionary algorithm loop as shown in Figure 1. An initial random population of mask-layouts is generated. The fabrication of each layout is simulated through a digital process simulator to produce a 3D fabricated shape, which is compared to a ...