Specular spectroscopic ellipsometry for the critical dimension monitoring of gratings fabricated on a thick transparent plate.

Specular-mode spectroscopic ellipsometry is applied to analyze the optical response of gratings fabricated on a thick transparent plate substrate. The principles of the optical response of the gratings are described by employing incoherent contributions due to backreflections in the finite transparent substrate medium. A special function identifies a “diminution effect” caused by deflecting the secondary contributions from the primary beam axis. Two different methods are used to measure the ellipsometric response, a liquid solution method with the backreflections eliminated and a method including the incoherent backreflections. The grating parameters deduced by fitting from the measurement using the first method are applied to simulate the ellipsometric response using the second method. The spectral dependencies yielded by both methods are compared with remarkable agreement between the simulations and the measurements, which suggests the high usability of the backreflection method in the metrological characterization of gratings made on transparent plates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]