The availability of actinic blank inspection is one of the key milestones for EUV lithography on the way to high volume manufacturing. Placed at the very beginning of the mask manufacturing flow, blank inspection delivers the most critical data set for the judgment of the initial blank quality and final mask performance. From all actinic metrology tools proposed and discussed over the last years, actinic blank inspection (ABI) tool is the first one to reach the pre-production status. In this paper we give an overview of EIDEC-Lasertec ABI program, provide a description of the system and share the most recent performance test results of the tool for 16 nm technology node.

As extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography enters high volume manufacturing, the semiconductor industry has considered a lithography-wavelength-matched actinic patterned mask inspection (APMI) tool to be a major remaining EUV mask infrastructure gap. Now, an actinic patterned mask inspection system has been developed to fill this gap. Combining experience gained from developing and commercializing the 13.5nm wavelength actinic blank inspection (ABI) system with decades of deep ultraviolet (DUV) patterned mask defect inspection system manufacturing, we have introduced the world's first high-sensitivity actinic patterned mask inspection and review system, the ACTIS A150 (ACTinic Inspection System). Producing this APMI system required developing and implementing new technologies including a highintensity EUV source and high-numerical aperture EUV optics. The APMI system achieves extremely high sensitivity to defects because of its high-resolution, low noise imaging. It has demonstrated a capability to detect mask defects having an estimated lithographic impact of 10% CD deviation on the printed wafer.

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