Reaching a CD uniformity of below 3 nm for 300 mm post-etch wafers by adjusting the CD distribution of ADI wafers

Jie-Wei Sun; Yong-Fa Huang; Sho-Shen Lee; Chun-Chi Yu; Benjamin Szu-Min Lin; Steven Fu; Mike Slessor

doi:10.1117/12.598979

10 May 2005 Reaching a CD uniformity of below 3 nm for 300 mm post-etch wafers by adjusting the CD distribution of ADI wafers

Jie-Wei Sun, Yong-Fa Huang, Sho-Shen Lee, Chun-Chi Yu, Benjamin Szu-Min Lin, Steven Fu, Mike Slessor

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 5752, Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XIX; (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.598979
Event: Microlithography 2005, 2005, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

Obtaining good post-etching CD uniformity is getting more and more important in advanced processes such as 90 nm, 65 nm, and even 45nm for 300 mm wafers. But process noise greatly impacts the CD uniformity, especially etching bias and metrology noise. To achieve a CD uniformity of below 3 nm for 300 mm post-etch wafers, the metrology noise and process noise must be reduced and compensated for. In this paper, we demonstrate spectroscopic ellipsometry CD with the advantages of high stability and high accuracy to get CD information precisely, and high sensitivity to monitor PEB temperature and exposure energy fine variation in order to compensate for the etching bias. This study focuses on the feasibility of minimizing the CD uniformity of post-etch wafers by ADI CD compensation for a 300 mm leading-edge fab. Because the CD uniformity of after-development inspection (ADI) wafers from a leading-edge lithographic tool could be in the range of only 3 nm, it is very challenging to reveal the true CD signature of an ADI wafer using a metrology tool. A spectroscopic ellipsometry based metrology tool, SpectraCD, was used in this study. In order to make sure the CD signatures reported by SpectraCD reveal the true behavior of a lithographic tool, the well-published Total Test Repeatability (TTR) test was adopted. In comparison with 3 nm CD uniformity, a 0.2 nm TTR is accurate enough for this study. In addition, from more than 100 wafers produced within a week, the CD signature of ADI wafers is very stable on wafer-to-wafer and lot-to-lot bases. Basically, all the ADI wafers produced from a single post-exposure-bake plate of an exposure tool within a week show very similar CD signatures. The feasibility of reaching a CD uniformity of 3 nm for post-etch wafers will be demonstrated in this study.

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Jie-Wei Sun, Yong-Fa Huang, Sho-Shen Lee, Chun-Chi Yu, Benjamin Szu-Min Lin, Steven Fu, and Mike Slessor "Reaching a CD uniformity of below 3 nm for 300 mm post-etch wafers by adjusting the CD distribution of ADI wafers", Proc. SPIE 5752, Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XIX, (10 May 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.598979

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KEYWORDS

Critical dimension metrology

Semiconducting wafers

Etching

Metrology

Single crystal X-ray diffraction

Lithography

Inspection

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