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We recently built a 405nm laser based optical interferometry system for 9nm node patterned wafer defect inspection. Defects with volumes smaller than 15nm by 90nm by 35nm have been detected. The success of defect detection relied on accurate mechanical scanning of the wafer and custom engineered image denoising post-processing. To further improve the detection sensitivity, we designed a higher precision XYZ scanning stage and replaced the laser source with an incoherent LED to remove the speckle noise. With these system modifications, we successfully detected both defects and surface contamination particles in bright-field imaging mode. Recently, we have upgraded this system for interferometric defect inspection.

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