Patent ID: 8679731

Claim:
A semiconductor device manufacturing method, comprising: applying illumination light from an illumination light source to a photomask containing a mask pattern composed of a transparent region and a nontransparent region, and projecting diffracted light components from the photomask on a substrate via a projection optical system to form a photoresist pattern corresponding to the mask pattern on the substrate, wherein the mask pattern includes a plurality of opening patterns which are the transparent regions, the centers of the opening patterns being arranged on each of a plurality of parallel lines at regular second intervals in a second direction, the plurality of parallel lines having regular first intervals in a first direction and extending in the second direction perpendicular to the first direction, the centers of the plurality of opening patterns arranged on the adjacent ones of the plurality of parallel lines are displaced from each other 1/n of the second interval in the second direction, wherein n is an integer greater than two, an illumination shape of the illumination light source is set so that three of the diffracted light components from the photomask pass through a pupil of the projection optical system, the illumination light source is modified dipole illumination having a first luminous region and a second luminous region which are arranged at symmetrical positions displaced from the center of the illumination light source in the first and second directions, respectively, and at least one of the first luminous region and the second luminous region includes a point which is displaced a distance represented by Expression (1) below in the second direction and a distance represented by Expression (2) below in the first direction from the center of the illumination light source σ x = λ 18 ⁢ NA ⁢ ( 9 P x + 2 ⁢ P x P y 2 ) ( 1 ) σ y = - λ 6 ⁢ P y ⁢ NA ( 2 ) where λ is an exposure wavelength, NA is the numerical aperture of a projection lens, Px is the second interval, and Py is the first interval.