Patent ID: 6920368

Claim:
A method for determining a precompensated pattern of exposure doses of an electron beam required per pattern position to obtain a desired pattern in a coating on a substrate, the method comprising the steps of: determining a smearing function of the electron beam; and determining a precompensated pattern with the smearing function and a desired pattern, wherein the determination is performed such that electron beam exposure doses contain almost exclusively positive values and that the electron beam exposure doses are smooth relative to each other, wherein the step of determining the precompensated pattern comprises the steps of: a) estimating a regularization parameter; b) determining a precompensated pattern with all pattern points of the desired pattern with the exception of a determined pattern point; c) smearing the precompensated pattern again with the smearing function in order to predict the dose of the determined pattern point; d) repeating steps b) and c) for each pattern point; e) repeating steps a) to d) with an adapted regularization parameter until a final value of a regularization parameter is obtained; and f) determining the precompensated pattern with the final value of the regularization parameter.