ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 8 -- United States Patent no. 12,436,466, issued on Oct. 7, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
"Optimized mask stitching" was invented by Sagar Trivedi (Santa Clara, Calif.) and Daniel Beylkin (Pasadena, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of manufacturing a photo mask includes determining an enhancement region, in a simulation zone, of a layout pattern of a photo mask. The method includes determining a stitching mobility zone inside the simulation zone, determining an optimization mobility zone inside the stitching mobility zone, and performing an inverse lithographic transformation (ILT) operation of the layout...