The accelerated pace of the semiconductor industry in recent years is putting a strain on existing dimensional metrology equipments (such as CDSEM, AFM, Scatterometry) to keep up with ever-increasing metrology challenges. However, a revolution appears to be forming with the recent advent of Hybrid Metrology (HM) -a practice of combining measurements from multiple equipment types in order to enable or improve measurement performance. In this paper we extend our previous work on HM to measure advanced 1X node layers -EUV and Negative Tone Develop (NTD) resist as well as 3D etch structures such as FinFETs. We study the issue of data quality and matching between toolsets involved in hybridization, and propose a unique optimization methodology to overcome these effects. We demonstrate measurement improvement for these advanced structures using HM by verifying the data with reference tools (AFM, XSEM, TEM). We also study enhanced OCD models for litho structures by modeling Line-edge roughness (LER) and validate its impact on profile accuracy. Finally, we investigate hybrid calibration of CDSEM to measure in-die resist line height by Pattern Top Roughness (PTR) methodology.

No abstract

The X-ray photoelectron diffraction (XPD) intensities from Si(100) substrates with silicon oxides of various thicknesses are quantitatively analyzed based on the elastic attenuation of XPD intensity from hydrogen-terminated Si(100) in the silicon oxide. The elastic attenuation length of Si 2p photoelectrons excited by Al Kα in the silicon oxides is determined to be 2.9 nm, which reproduces the experimentally measured polar-angle intensity distributions from Si(100) substrates with the silicon oxides. The thickness error obtained from conventional angle-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (AR-XPS) is maximum for a silicon oxide thickness of 2 nm; however, by modified AR-XPS considering the XPD effect, the thickness error of the apparent thickness is reduced by one-third for such silicon oxides.

No abstract

No abstract