E-beam inspection of EUV mask defects: To etch or not to etch?

Ravi Bonam; Hung-Yu Tien; Chanro Park; Scott Halle; Fei Wang; Daniel Corliss; Wei Fang; Jack Jau

doi:10.1117/12.2048284

17 April 2014 E-beam inspection of EUV mask defects: To etch or not to etch?

Ravi Bonam, Hung-Yu Tien, Chanro Park, Scott Halle, Fei Wang, Daniel Corliss, Wei Fang, Jack Jau

Proceedings Volume 9048, Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Lithography V; 904812 (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2048284
Event: SPIE Advanced Lithography, 2014, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

EUV Lithography is aimed to be inserted into mainstream production for sub-20nm pattern fabrication. Unlike conventional optical lithography, frequent defectivity monitors (adders, repeaters etc.) are required in EUV lithography. Due to sub-20nm pattern and defect dimensions e-beam inspection of critical pattern areas is essential for yield monitor. In previous work we showed sub-10nm defect detection sensitivity¹ on patterned resist wafers. In this work we report 8-10× improvement in scan rates of etched patterns compared to resist patterns without loss in defect detection sensitivity. We observed good etch transfer of sub-10nm resist features. A combination of smart scan strategies with improved etched pattern scan rates can further improve throughput of e-beam inspection. An EUV programmed defect mask with Line/Space, Contact patterns was used to evaluate printability of defects and defect detection (Die-Die and Die-Database) capability of the e-beam inspection tool. Defect inspection tool parameters such as averaging, threshold value were varied to assess its detection capability and were compared to previously obtained results on resist patterns.

Citation Download Citation

Ravi Bonam, Hung-Yu Tien, Chanro Park, Scott Halle, Fei Wang, Daniel Corliss, Wei Fang, and Jack Jau "E-beam inspection of EUV mask defects: To etch or not to etch?", Proc. SPIE 9048, Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Lithography V, 904812 (17 April 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2048284

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