MANUFACTURING ADJUSTMENT DURING ARTICLE FABRICATION

The use of neural networks has been employed to adjust processing during the fabrication of articles. For example, in the production of photolithographic masks by electron beam irradiation of a mask blank in a desired pattern, electrons scattered from the mask substrate cause distortion of the pattern. Adjustment for such scattering is possible during the manufacturing process by employing an adjustment function determined by a neural network whose parameters are established relative to a prototypical mask pattern.