Patent ID: 8656319

Claim:
A method for use in a lithography system including an optical illuminator with first and second templates, wherein the first and second templates are adjacent to each other, the method comprising: performing an exposure by the illuminator on a photomask; optimizing an optical illuminator setting based, at least in part, on one or more of a numerical aperture, a sigma-in, a sigma-out, and a wave phase for the photomask with a defined gate pitch in a first direction in the first template; determining optical proximity correction (OPC) results for the photomask; determining OPC correctors to converge the OPC results with a target edge placement error (EPE) and a mask error enhancement factor (MEEF) to produce a first OPC setting for the first template, wherein the first OPC setting targets a relatively small EPE and MEEF of the defined gate pitch in the first template; checking the first OPC setting for a relatively small EPE and a relatively small MEEF of the defined gate pitch in the second template, wherein the photomask employs X-Y asymmetric design rules.