Patent ID: 6890689

Claim:
A method for fabricating a mask configuration, which comprises: providing a carrier substrate having a surface region; forming a mask substrate on the surface region of the carrier substrate; patterning the mask substrate to form a mask with a configuration of recesses therein extending from a surface region of the mask substrate to the surface region of the carrier substrate; performing a sequence of two subprocesses to carry out the patterning of the mask substrate, a first subprocess of the two subprocesses being chosen to have a negative footprint, a second subprocess of the two subprocesses being chosen to have a positive footprint; and performing the subprocesses such that deviations in the configuration of the recesses in the mask, from a desired configuration, which occur as a result of each of the subprocesses, are compensated for as much as possible by a compensation, which is selected from a group consisting of a local compensation and a global compensation, such that the configuration of the recesses in the mask deviates as little as possible from the desired configuration, and as a result, the patterning of the mask substrate is carried out with error correction, the compensation being carried out as a footprint correction with the negative footprint and the positive footprint substantially compensating each other.