Patent ID: 7824827

Claim:
A method for setting up lithographic processing of a substrate with a resist layer, the lithographic processing being characterized by a set of selectable process parameter values, comprising: selecting values for a set of process parameters, determining a substrate reflectivity in the resist layer for the lithographic processing characterized by the set of selected process parameter values; and evaluating whether the determined substrate reflectivity is smaller than a maximum allowable substrate reflectivity, wherein the maximum allowable substrate reflectivity is determined as a function of a normalized image log-slope for the lithographic processing; wherein the method further comprises: identifying different structures to be processed and determining a corresponding normalized image log-slope for each identified different structure to be processed; determining the maximum allowable substrate reflectivity for each corresponding normalized image log-slope value; selecting at least one structure corresponding with a lowest value for a ratio of normalized image log-slope/maximum allowable substrate reflectivity; and performing the selecting values of the process parameters, the determining the substrate reflectivity, and the evaluating for optimizing lithographic processing of the at least one selected structure.