Method and apparatus for performing rule-based gate shrink utilizing dipole illumination

摘要

A method of printing a gate pattern on a substrate comprising the steps of: identifying at least one area in the pattern in which one of the gate features overlays one of the active regions; reducing a width dimension of the one of the gate features at the location which the one of the gate features overlays the one of the active regions; extracting the gates features from the pattern; decomposing the gate features into a vertical component mask and a horizontal component mask; and illuminating the vertical component mask and the horizontal component mask utilizing dipole illumination.