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Shrinkage behavior caused by a single-line scan of an electron beam over a photoresist line was studied, including shrinkage distribution in the photoresist-line direction. As single-line scan is the minimum unit of controllable electron-beam irradiation during scanning-electron-microscope-image (SEM-image) processing, the minimum amount of shrinkage should be observed in the condition. A new method for evaluating the minute amount shrinkage and the shrinkage distribution caused by a single-line scan was developed. According to the results of evaluations with this method, the shrinkage of a 50-nm-wide photoresist line caused by a single-line scan is less than 0.1 nm under landing energies of 200, 300, and 500 eV and probe current of 8 pA. This shrinkage is more than ten times smaller than the typical amount of shrinkage caused by a standard two-dimensional scan. This result indicates the possibility of a significant reduction of photoresist shrinkage during SEM measurements. The evaluations also show that the shrinkage caused by a single-line scan distributes more than about 30 nm in the photoresist-line direction, which is wider than the simulated electron-scattering range. Moreover, the evaluations show that the shrinkage distribution is narrower at higher position of the photoresist-line. This tendency suggests that the wide shrinkage-distribution does not stem from the distribution of the back-scattered electrons (BSEs) which enter the side wall of the photoresist line from the spaces nearby, because the incidents of BSEs distribute wider at higher position of the photoresist-line. Hence, shrinkage occurs in a wider region of the photoresist line than the region where electrons (including directly incident electrons and BSEs) reach. This result suggests that in order to interpret the photoresist-shrinkage mechanism it is important to clarify how the microscopic volume-reduction caused by electron-molecule interactions is integrated into macroscopic photoresist-pattern deformation. An elastic deformation is a plausible mechanism for this macroscopic photoresist-shrinkage process.

The novel method of sub-nanometer accuracy (uncertainty) for the line width measurement and line edge detection using STEM (Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope) images is proposed to calibrate CD-SEM line width measurement and standardization of line edge detection. In accordance with the proposed method, the traceability and reference metrology are established using Si lattice structures and edge detection of Si line with metal coating. First, the interface of SiO2-Air is defined using image intensity of STEM dark field images after metal coating. Second, an image magnification is calculated using 2D Fourier analysis of the images. Third, the edge positions are detected. Using the proposed method, the expanded uncertainty (3 sigma) less than 0.3 nm for the line width of 50 nm is established.

As the design rule for semiconductor device shrinks, metrology for the critical dimension scanning electron microscope (CD-SEM) is not only for measuring the dimension but also the shape, such as 2D contour of hot-spot pattern and OPC calibration-pattern. Accuracy of the shape metrology is dependent on distortion of CD-SEM image. The distortion of magnification in horizontal direction (i.e. x-direction) can be measured by pitch-calibration method, that measures pitch of identical vertical line patterns while view-shifting the identical pitch in x-direction. However, the number of measurement point could not be sufficient because this method requires long measurement time. Not only the horizontal magnification but also vertical magnification (i.e. y-direction) and shear deformation (i.e. distortion of shape) are necessary to keep highly accurate measurement. In this paper we introduce the view-shift method for quick and accurate measurement of the image-distortion. From using this method, both local distortion of magnification and shape can be measured in horizontal and vertical directions at once. Firstly, two SEM-images of evaluation sample are taken. The sample should have a lot of unique features, e.g. Textured-Silicon. View-shift about one ninth of the image size should be done by two images, and There are a lot of unique features in overlapped region between two images. As distribution of the unique features, displacement between two images indicates the local image-distortion. The dislocation of sample contour from distortion is estimated from the local-distortion. The image-dislocation on a tool evaluated in this paper is less than 0.5 nm. It is a tolerated size for current device process. However, it could be increased under the noisy external environment.

The accelerated pace of the semiconductor industry in recent years is putting a strain on existing dimensional metrology equipments (such as CDSEM, AFM, Scatterometry) to keep up with ever-increasing metrology challenges. However, a revolution appears to be forming with the recent advent of Hybrid Metrology (HM) - a practice of combining measurements from multiple equipment types in order to enable or improve measurement performance. In this paper we extend our previous work on HM to measure advanced 1X node layers - EUV and Negative Tone Develop (NTD) resist as well as 3D etch structures such as FinFETs. We study the issue of data quality and matching between toolsets involved in hybridization, and propose a unique optimization methodology to overcome these effects. We demonstrate measurement improvement for these advanced structures using HM by verifying the data with reference tools (AFM, XSEM, TEM). We also study enhanced OCD models for litho structures by modeling Line-edge roughness (LER) and validate its impact on profile accuracy. Finally, we investigate hybrid calibration of CDSEM to measure in-die resist line height by Pattern Top Roughness (PTR) methodology.

The novel method of sub-nanometer accuracy (uncertainty) for the line width and line profile measurement using STEM (Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope) images is proposed to calibrate CD-SEM line width measurement. In accordance with the proposed method, the traceability and reference metrology of line width measurements are established using Si lattice structures. First, we define two interfaces of Si-SiO2and Si-Air. The interface of Si-SiO2is defined as the end of Si lattice structure, and the interface of SiO2-Air is defined using image intensity of STEM image after metal coating. Second, an image magnification is calculated using 2D Fourier analysis of a STEM image. Third, the edge positions of the line are detected by Si lattice patterns and image intensity. Using the proposed method, the estimated accuracy less than 0.5 nm for the line width of 50 nm is established.

We fabricated sub-50-nm pitch reference grating with positional identification mark for specifying the location. The address mark of silicon groove was fabricated by EB lithography and dry etching processes. The sub-50-nm pitch multilayer substrate was bonded with the address mark silicon substrate and polished as a flat chip. Next the fine pitch grating reference pattern was fabricated by SiO2selective chemical etching. Finally the sub-50-nm pitch grating pattern was set on the flat surface for CD-SEM due to retarding bias system for low voltage inspection. As a result of the fundamental characteristics evaluation using CD-SEM, the uniformity of the pitch size in the reference chip was smaller than 1 nm in 3. The positional identification marks are useful for obtaining accurate calibrations by specifying the location of the grating and the number of calibrations. Also, the pitch-size was obtained by diffraction angle measurements with a high-accuracy grazing incidence small-angle x-ray scattering (GI-SAXS). The traceability of calibration is under vertification.