A process is described for shrinking gate lengths and poly interconnects simultaneously
during the fabrication of an integrated circuit. A positive tone photoresist is
coated on a substrate and is first exposed with an alternating phase shift mask
that has full size scattering bars which enable a gate dimension to be printed
that is to the size of the exposing wavelength. The substrate is
then exposed using a tritone attenuated phase shift mask with a chrome blocking
area to protect the shrunken gates and attenuated areas with scattering bars for
shrinking the interconnect lines. Scattering bars are not printed in the photoresist
pattern. The process affords higher DOF, lower OPE, and less sensitivity to lens
aberrations than conventional lithography methods. A data processing flow is provided
which leads to a modified GDS layout for each of the two masks. A system for producing
phase shifting layout data is also included.