Influence of line edge roughness and CD uniformity on EUV scatterometry for CD characterization of EUV masks

Frank Scholze; Christian Laubis; Uwe Dersch; Jan Pomplun; Sven Burger; Frank Schmidt

doi:10.1117/12.726159

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18 June 2007 The influence of line edge roughness and CD uniformity on EUV scatterometry for CD characterization of EUV masks

Frank Scholze, Christian Laubis, Uwe Dersch, Jan Pomplun, Sven Burger, Frank Schmidt

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Proceedings Volume 6617, Modeling Aspects in Optical Metrology; 66171A (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.726159
Event: Optical Metrology, 2007, Munich, Germany

Abstract

Scatterometry, the analysis of light diffracted from a periodic structure, is a versatile metrology for characterizing periodic structures, regarding critical dimension (CD) and other profile properties. For extreme ultraviolet (EUV) masks, only EUV radiation provides direct information on the mask performance comparable to the operating regime in an EUV lithography tool. With respect to the small feature dimensions on EUV masks, the short wavelength of EUV is also advantageous since it provides more diffraction orders as compared to UV. First measurements using PTB's EUV reflectometer at the storage ring BESSY II showed that it is feasible to derive information on the line profile in periodic areas of lines and spaces by means of rigorous numerical modeling. A prototype EUV mask with a matrix of test fields each divided into subfields containing among others test fields with lines & spaces was used for the measurements. In this contribution we summarize our present results in determining line profile parameters using scatterometry and reflectometry to provide the input data for the determination of CD and side-wall geometry using rigorous calculations of EUV diffraction. Particularly, we present a first investigation on the influence of line edge roughness and CD uniformity by correlating in-plane scatterometry data for the discrete diffraction orders corresponding to the pitch of the structure to out-of-plane measurements of diffusely scattered light induced by line edge roughness and CD uniformity. We demonstrate the influence of diffuse scattering on the determination of CD and side-wall geometry using only the discrete in-plane diffraction orders. To this aim we perform finite element (FEM) simulations on 2D computational domains.

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Frank Scholze, Christian Laubis, Uwe Dersch, Jan Pomplun, Sven Burger, and Frank Schmidt "The influence of line edge roughness and CD uniformity on EUV scatterometry for CD characterization of EUV masks", Proc. SPIE 6617, Modeling Aspects in Optical Metrology, 66171A (18 June 2007); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.726159

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