PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16033596
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-07
Publication Date: 2018-11
Patent Classification: ["430", "005000"]

Abstract:
The present invention provides a halftone mask comprising an assist pattern and a manufacturing method of the halftone mask, which uses an ArF excimer laser as an exposing source, is used for a projection exposure by an off axis illumination, does not resolve the assist pattern while keeping the focal depth magnification effect as the assist pattern, and may form a transferred image having high contrast of a main pattern. A photomask is a photomask comprising the main pattern which is transferred to a transfer-target surface by the projection exposure and the assist pattern which is formed nearby the main pattern and not transferred, characterized in that the main pattern and the assist pattern are each constituted from a semi-transparent film made of the same material, a retardation of 180° is generated between the light transmitting through the main pattern and the light transmitting through a transparent region of a transparent substrate, and a predetermined retardation within the scope of 70° to 115° is generated between the light transmitting through the assist pattern and the light transmitting through the transparent region of the transparent substrate.

Claim (Index 9):
A manufacturing method of a photomask using an ArF excimer laser as an exposing source, being used for a projection exposure by an off axis illumination, and comprising on a principal plane of a transparent substrate a main pattern transferred to a transfer-target surface by the projection exposure and an assist pattern formed nearby the main pattern and not transferred to the transfer-target surface;\n wherein the manufacturing method comprises steps of: (a) forming a semi-transparent film and a light shielding film sequentially on the principal plane of the transparent substrate, in which the semi-transparent film is a two-layer semi-transparent film and a lower-layer semi-transparent film on the transparent substrate side serves also as an etch stop layer of an upper-layer semi-transparent film, to obtain a film thickness for allowing a retardation of approximately 180\u00b0 between a light transmitting through the two-layer semi-transparent film and a light transmitting through a transparent region of the transparent substrate; (b) forming a first resist pattern on the light shielding film to form a main pattern part and an assist pattern part by sequentially dry-etching the light shielding film and the two-layer semi-transparent film; (c) peeling off the first resist pattern to subsequently form a second resist pattern on the light shielding film and remove the light shielding film of the assist pattern part by etching; (d) peeling off the second resist pattern to subsequently dry-etch the whole principal plane of the transparent substrate and form the assist pattern by dry-etching the semi-transparent film of the assist pattern part until a film thickness for allowing a predetermined retardation within a scope of 70\u00b0 to 115\u00b0 between a light transmitting through the assist pattern and the light transmitting through the transparent region of the transparent substrate is obtained; and (e) removing the light shielding film of the main pattern part by etching to form the main pattern and generate a retardation of 180\u00b0 between a light transmitting through the main pattern and the light transmitting through the transparent region of the transparent substrate.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 23.0
- Percentile: 95.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.25581
- Patent Class: 430.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: True
- Related Applications: ['13147634', '14607541', '15341480', '11884554', '13706978']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.824758901284294
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.6151729542536869
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.8038003065812332
- Mean Citation Score: 462.73819
- Max Citation Score: 586.9111
- Similarity Product: 502.7971209944844

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test