Data-hiding and skew scan for unioning of shapes in electron beam lithography post-processing

摘要

A process and system for developing control signals for an electron beam lithography tool uses Cartesian and modified Cartesian processing of data representing edges of a pattern to be formed. Non-Cartesian data is masked by the generation of least enclosing rectangles to contain it. A skew scan technique later applied to the data so masked allows high speed substantially Cartesian processing of the non-Cartesian data. Edge data is segregated by angles to eliminate virtually all searching to establish edge processing order and processing speed is thus increased by approximately an order of magnitude in comparison with prior techniques and arrangements.