CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE IN NANOELECTRONICS (CEN)

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore – 560 012

Mask Fabrication Design Rules @ CEN using the

Microtech Laser Writer LW405
Alignment marks will be required if your device will have more than one mask process.
They could be of any type if you are planning to use the EVG 620 Double Sided Mask
Aligner available at our facility. If your mask aligner or stepper requires specific
alignment marks, it is your responsibility to include them in your design file. Typically
for better alignment accuracy, the alignment marks should of the same size as the
minimum feature present in your design. The figure shows some typical alignment marks.

There is always confusion when it comes to describing a clear field, dark field, bright
field and light field masks. To avoid this, @ CEN we describe two types of masks,
Positive mask and a Negative mask. A positive mask is one in which the pattern
described in your design will eventually pass UV light and a negative mask is one in
which the pattern described in your design will eventually block light. In detail, for
positive masks, the pattern described in your design file will be the regions where the
resist will get exposed and eventually get washed away in the developer, thereby
allowing the etchant to attack these regions leading to clear areas on the mask. In the case
of negative masks, the regions described in your pattern will not be exposed and hence
will stay on the mask eventually.

Pattern and Positive Mask

 Pattern and Negative Mask

As you can see from the above figure of a negative mask, it will be enormously time
consuming to expose the remaining regions on the mask except those pertaining to your
pattern. Therefore as a rule, you must include a rectangular border of width 10um
surrounding your pattern as shown in the figure below. There should be at least 25um gap
between the nearest structure and the edge of the border.

Original Pattern Modified Patern Final Negative mask

The masks that we use in our fab are Chrome plated soda lime glass plates around 3-4mm
thick precoated with AZ1518 photoresist. The thickness of the Chromium film is
approximately 1100 Angstroms and that of the photoresist is approximately 5300
Angstroms. The photoresist is baked at 130 degrees for 30 minutes. The masks are
available in three sizes, 3inch, 4inch and 5inch.

The minimum achievable resolution with our mask writer is 2um with a minimum gap of
4um for both positive and negative masks. Users should specify in the mask submission
form the minimum feature size on their design file and also the most critical features.

The maximum pattern area for a 5inch mask should be 4.5inch x 4.5inch and it should be
3.5inch x 3.5inch and 2.5inch x 2.5inch for a 4inch and a 3inch mask respectively.
If your design has polygons, make sure that they do not have more than 1000 nodes. If it
has greater than 1000 nodes, kindly make a better design. Any file containing polygons
greater than 1000 nodes will not be supported by our machine currently.

All structures have to be closed. Open structures will lead to an error in file conversion
into the machine specific format (LDF) and hence cannot be processed further.

Your file should not have more than a single layer. If your process has more than a single
layer, you can put more than one process layer on the design and make it into a single
layer in the editor. But your two process layers should not overlap in the mask design.
Please see the figure below for clarity. Your file should also not have any cell hierarchy,
meaning that all structures in your layer have to be flattened. Also, your file should not
have any layers which do not contain any structures, meaning that you should not have
any empty layers in your design file.

A two layer process Design file for making the mask

Your design has to be centered at the origin (0, 0). If it is not, then it will be done so
during fabrication. If you do not want automatic centering of the pattern, inform the mask
shop while submitting the form.

All your structures have to be snapped to the grid. If it isn’t, snapping to grid will be done
while fabrication. You can use any grid size depending on the minimum feature size of
your design. Note that the grid size doesn’t affect the writing time for the mask. The
writing time depends on the total pattern area.

Text is supported and the dimensions of the text should not be less than the minimum
feature size of your design. Also note that mask aligners always give a mirror image(with
respect to Y-axis) of the pattern existing on the mask onto the wafer and thus if you have
text in your design, make sure that you have corrected for the mirror inversion.
The mask writer at CEN can take CIF and GDSII files and CIF is more preferable.
Follow the procedure given below to export your design to CIF from Tanner L-Edit

Exporting CIF From L-Edit:

1. Open your_layout_file.tdb.
2. Open the master cell.
3. Create a new file, save it as mask_name.tdb.
4. Hit I key to instance your master cell (select your_layout_file.tdb on the “file” pull
down menu).
5. Go to File →Export Mask Data, and save mask file as
your_last_name_mask_name.cif
6. Accept the message that no fabrication cell has been designated.

The mask writer converts the CIF or GDSII files into a proprietary format called LDF
(Laser Draw Format) before beginning patterning. You can use any layout editor for
drawing your design. A few examples are L-Edit, Autocad, LinCAD, etc. The mask
writer comes with inbuilt editor software called CleWin. If you do not have access to
editors like Tanner L-Edit or any other editor, you can make use of CleWin for making
your design. Please contact the person in-charge of the equipment if you want to do so.
Saving CIF files using Clewin is easy as CIF is the default file saving format. There are
also possibilities to convert a bitmap to CIF, GDSII to CIF, DXF to CIF, Gerber to CIF
etc. A detailed description about this software can be got from the vendor manuals put up
at our website. You can also get more information about CleWin from
http://www.wieweb.com

If you are using L-Edit and you need to flatten your files, follow this procedure:

1. Import CIF File on L-Edit.

2. Open the cell that you want to be on the mask.
3. Select the entire pattern and hit the UNGROUP button until there is nothing else to
ungroup. This effectively removes the cell hierarchy.
4. With the whole pattern still selected, hit the GROUP button and create a new cell.
5. Open the cell you just created.
6. Select Menu/Save Cell to File...
7. Rename Cell File. A new L-Edit file containing ONLY this cell will be created.
8. Close L-Edit. Do not save this file unless you want the cell you just ungrouped to be
remain like that.
9. Open the L-Edit file under which you saved the Cell File
10. On L-Edit Select Cell/Fabricate
11. Select the cell. There should be only ONE cell in the menu. If there is more than one
cell, STOP and redo this procedure again; you made a mistake somewhere.
12. Export Cell into CIF

Flattening your structures is easy with CleWin. Go to Layout
Special
Flatten for
doing this.
All square shaped ends will have a rounding effect after mask fabrication as shown below

When you are drawing connected wires, be sure to overlap them a bit to avoid
disconnected wires after pattering.

However do not overlap the wires too much because it would cause overexposure at the
junction.

For that matter, you should not overlap structures a lot, though some overlapping is
required to prevent a break in connection, since the overlapped area gets more dose
comparatively and hence will get developed at a faster rate in the developer leading to
expanded features.

Another important thing is that, we use wet processes for etching the chromium and
therefore line width control is not great when compared to dry etching methods.
In case of a Positive mask, your features may expand by 2um and therefore you have to
design your most critical features keeping this at the back of your mind. In case of a
Negative mask, your features may reduce in size by 2um and you have to make
changes to your design file accordingly.

Your mask will be delivered at a date which will be communicated to you at the time of
submission of the form. Once your mask is ready, you can pick it up from our fab and
inspect it for subsequent usage.

I recommend you to go through these docs for further clarity in making a good design for
your mask:
Note: All the following links may not be applicable with respect to the Laser Writer
available at our facility but they will give you a general idea about designing masks

1) http://snf.stanford.edu/Process/Masks/ContactMaskTutorial.pdf
2) http://cmi.epfl.ch/photo/Autocad_Rules.pdf
3) www.ncf.uic.edu/manuals/Mask_Rules.PDF
4) www.ncf.uic.edu/manuals%5CGeneratingMasks.PDF
5) http://164.67.193.121/machinefiles/39/Mask_submission_appendix.pdf
6) www.nfc.umn.edu/maskmaking_rules.pdf