Dose-focus monitor technique using a critical-dimension scanning electron microscope and its application to local variation analysis

Shoji Hotta; Timothy A. Brunner; Scott D. Halle; Keiichiro Hitomi; Takeshi Kato; Atsuko Yamaguchi

doi:10.1117/1.JMM.11.4.043011

11 December 2012 Dose-focus monitor technique using a critical-dimension scanning electron microscope and its application to local variation analysis

Shoji Hotta, Timothy A. Brunner, Scott D. Halle, Keiichiro Hitomi, Takeshi Kato, Atsuko Yamaguchi

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS, Vol. 11, Issue 4, 043011 (December 2012). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMM.11.4.043011

Abstract

A dose-focus monitoring technique using a critical-dimension scanning electron microscope (CD-SEM) is studied for applications on product wafers. Our technique uses two target structures: one is a dense grating structure for dose determination, and the other is a relatively isolated line grating for focus determination. These targets are less than 6 μm, and they can be inserted across a product chip to monitor dose and focus variation in a chip. Monitoring precision is estimated to be on the order of 1% for dose and 10 nm for focus, and the technique can be applied to dose and focus monitoring on product wafers. The developed technique is used to analyze spatial correlation in dose and focus over a wide range of distances, using a mask with a multitude of these targets. The variation (3σ ) of dose and focus difference between two monitor targets is examined for various separation distances, and the variation of focus difference increases from 10 to 25 nm as the separation distance increases from ∼20 μm to ∼10 mm . The variation of 10 nm observed at the shortest distance reflects focus monitoring precision, and focus variation sources such as wafer thickness variation come into play at longer distances.

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Shoji Hotta, Timothy A. Brunner, Scott D. Halle, Keiichiro Hitomi, Takeshi Kato, and Atsuko Yamaguchi "Dose-focus monitor technique using a critical-dimension scanning electron microscope and its application to local variation analysis," Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS 11(4), 043011 (11 December 2012). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMM.11.4.043011

Published: 11 December 2012

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KEYWORDS

Scanning electron microscopy

Semiconducting wafers

Photoresist processing

Scatterometry

Electron microscopes

Metrology

Critical dimension metrology

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