Patent ID: 6961920

Claim:
A method of creating a mask adapted for use in lithographic production of layout features on a substrate, comprising: providing a design mask pattern of the design layout pattern to be created on the substrate; providing a predicted layout pattern from the design mask pattern of what would be created on said substrate using said design mask pattern; successively sampling selected points of related contour edge features across said predicted layout pattern and said design mask pattern to determine distance values between respective ones of said contour edge features, said distance values including the value of the width of a pair of metal lines and the distance between said metal lines; providing yield curves as a function of said distance values between said contour edge features, said yield curves represented by a family of yield curves that are a function of the width of said metal lines and the distance therebetween; determining from said yield curves for each selected sampling point whether the current position of the contour edge feature of said predicted layout pattern is at a position that provides acceptable yield; and incrementally moving the said current position of contour edge feature of said predicted wafer layout pattern toward an edge position of improved yield.