A spectroscopic, diffraction based technique is proposed in this paper as an alternative solution for overlay metrology in technology nodes below 90 nanometers. This novel technique extracts alignment error from broadband diffraction efficiency of specially designed diffraction targets in real-time. Feasibility of the technique is studied for a front-end process flow by measuring grating targets printed on a series of wafers which were intentionally mis-processed to introduce inter-die (grid) level programmed overlay errors. Correlation to conventional imaging overlay measurements is demonstrated. Short term and long term data sets demonstrate sub-half-nanometer in 3-sigma statistical parameters that characterize the diffraction overlay system, repeatability, reproducibility, Tool-Induced-Shift and tool-to-tool matching. The resulting total measurement uncertainty for this technique is thus demonstrated to be in the sub-nanometer range.
Process tolerances for critical dimensions are becoming increasingly severe as lithographic technology drives the minimum integrated-circuit feature size toward 0.1 micrometers and below. In response, Optical Critical Dimension metrology (OCD), an optical-wavelength light-diffraction technique, is currently undergoing an industry-wide evaluation as a fast, accurate, and non-destructive sub-100nm line-width monitor. As such, effective process monitoring requires detailed understanding of the correlation between CD-SEM and the OCD measurements. Correlation in CD measurements between the OCD technique and SEM techniques is investigated in this paper by measuring photo-resist gratings on a polysilicon gate film stack. Intra-grating CD variation is shown to account for scatter in the correlation plot. A positive offset in the correlation is also observed and a mechanism is proposed to account for the discrepancy. Correlation between CD-SEM and OCD is also demonstrated for samples with three different pitch sizes. A qualitative line-profile correlation between cross-section SEM (X-SEM) and OCD is presented for photoresist gratings in a Focus Exposure Matrix (FEM).
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