A correction method for automatic, high-precision CD-measurements on electrostatically charged wafers has been developed and installed in the Hitachi CD-SEM S-9260 to evaluate its performance. There are two types of charging: global and local. Global charging is stable and spreads all over a wafer while the local charging area is limited within the beam scanning area. A conventional CD-SEM has two weak points with respect to those charged wafers: one is failure at the positioning and autofocusing procedure which interferes with the fully automatic measurement sequence, and the other is disturbance of optical magnification which degrades the precision of CD-measurement values. By probing the global charging voltage with an electrostatic voltmeter prior to the CD-measurements, we subtract the voltage from a retarding voltage and then apply it to the wafer holder. The beam-focusing condition can stay within the fully automatically tunable range. And by generating numerical functions to represent the relationship between the global charging voltage, wafer height, excitation current of the objective lens and optical magnification, with the help of electron optical simulations, we can calculate the true optical magnification and the correct CD-measurement values. The local charging voltage is derived from the voltage shift of S-curves of secondary electron yield between conductive and insulated wafers measured with an energy filter. We correct the CD-measurement values using the simulated proportional relationship between magnifications of the electrostatic micro-lens and the local charging voltage. The coefficient is almost constant when the charging area is smaller than an equivalent circle of 100mm radius. We demonstrate that the CD-measurement values are successfully corrected within 0.1 percent in deviation for both charging types.
Because of rapidly decreasing line-width of integrated circuits, it is necessary to measure and control their critical dimensions with high accuracy. Hitachi has developed a new critical-dimension-measurement scanning electron microscope S-9000 series, which has a new electron optics with retarding and boosting electric fields. The upper pole piece of the objective lens is kept at a high positive voltage with respect to the ground so as to reduce aberration of the objective lens drastically. To optimize the boosting voltage we have developed optics simulators that is capable of computing aberration coefficients in electric and magnetic mixed fields. At the optimized boosting voltage of around 5kV, 3nm resolution is achieved for a final accelerating voltage of 800V. The high boosting voltage is effective in imaging bottoms of contact holes having high aspect ratios.
The semiconductor industry is moving from half-micron to quarter-micron design rules. To support this evolution, Hitachi has developed a new critical dimension measurement scanning electron microscope (CD-SEM), the model S-8800 series, for quality control of quarter- micron process lines. The new CD-SEM provides detailed examination of process conditions with 5 nm resolution and 5 nm repeatability (3 sigma) at accelerating voltage 800 V using secondary electron imaging. In addition, a newly developed load-lock system has a capability of achieving a high sample throughput of 20 wafers/hour (5 point measurements per wafer) under continuous operation. To support user friendliness, the system incorporates a graphical user interface (GUI), an automated pattern recognition system which helps locating measurement points, both manual and semi-automated operation, and user-programmable operating parameters.
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