Patent ID: 8612904

Claim:
A method for optimizing illumination and polarization for advanced optical lithography, the method comprising: bisecting, using a computing device, an illumination pupil plane of an illumination source into a plurality of elements; selecting one or more preferred elements of the plurality of elements for a set of integrated circuit (IC) design features of an IC design at a set of orientations; selecting a metric for evaluating the set of IC design features at the set of orientations; simulating a performance of the set of IC design features at each of the set of orientations for each of the one or more preferred elements using multiple polarization states; comparing the performance of the set of IC design features to the metric to determine a set of optimal illumination and polarization outcomes for each of the set of IC design features at each of the set of orientations; synthesizing the set of optimal illumination and polarization outcomes for the set of IC design features at different intensity ratios; and comparing the set of optimal illumination and polarization outcomes for the set of IC design features synthesized at different intensity ratios to a set of design tolerance requirements to determine optimal illumination and polarization conditions for the IC design.