A novel method to quantify the complex mask patterns

Yu-Lung Tung; Che-Yuan Sun; Shu-Chuan Chuang; Woei-Bin Luo; Jia-Rui Hu; Hsiang-Lin Chen; Hua-Tai Lin; Chih-Ming Ke; Tsai-Sheng Gau

doi:10.1117/12.2218346

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8 March 2016 A novel method to quantify the complex mask patterns

Yu-Lung Tung, Che-Yuan Sun, Shu-Chuan Chuang, Woei-Bin Luo, Jia-Rui Hu, Hsiang-Lin Chen, Hua-Tai Lin, Chih-Ming Ke, Tsai-Sheng Gau

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Proceedings Volume 9778, Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XXX; 97783S (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2218346
Event: SPIE Advanced Lithography, 2016, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

Immersion technology has successfully extends the application of ArF lithography in the semiconductor. However, as we further push the k₁ factor below 0.3, the patterning fidelities degrade significantly. In this paper, a novel method to quantify the mask fidelity of complex 2D patterns is proposed. With this method, the critical dimension (CD) error of both edge placement error (EPE) and corner rounding can be well described by using 2 indices "bias" and "blur" respectively. The "bias" is defined as the CD offset between the mask and the targets, and the "blur" is a derived term that can well represent the mask rounding. These 2 indices are not only able to describe the mask quality but also able to link with model parameters that are used in optical proximity correction (OPC) and some other applications. In this paper, we demonstrate the methodology and quantify the actual mask quality on the complex and critical 2D patterning in the advanced nodes.

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Yu-Lung Tung, Che-Yuan Sun, Shu-Chuan Chuang, Woei-Bin Luo, Jia-Rui Hu, Hsiang-Lin Chen, Hua-Tai Lin, Chih-Ming Ke, and Tsai-Sheng Gau "A novel method to quantify the complex mask patterns", Proc. SPIE 9778, Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XXX, 97783S (8 March 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2218346

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