High NA EUV lithography has become a reality. The high NA EUV scanner (EXE:5000) produces exposure fields of 26x16.5 mm2 which is twice smaller than standard fields on other scanners. For certain use cases (e.g. when a die is larger than the High NA field) stitching between two exposure fields might be required. Stitching of vertical lines across two exposure fields has already been demonstrated in several publications. In this publication, we pay attention to photomask related aspects of stitching which are multifold. We draw attention to the need for mask resolution enhancement which will enable advanced OPC at stitching. We will show stitching behavior on both Tantalum and low-n masks and demonstrate low-n absorber reflectivity suppression by means of sub-resolution gratings which is required for stitching. We explore the behavior of the exposure field black border (BB) edge and formulate recommendations for specifications on BB edge control as well as pattern placement and pattern fidelity at the black border. Finally, we conclude that the mask performance is a key enabler of High NA stitching.
OPC model accuracy is an important contributor to the EPE budget in the latest lithography nodes. The overall OPC accuracy depends on accurate calibration of the sub-models capturing mask, optical, resist and etch effects. The advent of high-NA (0.55) EUV lithography with anamorphic imaging has further increased the emphasis on accurate aerial image model calibration for computational lithography. In this paper, we study the feasibility of using direct aerial image measurements with the ZEISS AIMS EUV tool for improving OPC model accuracy as well as accurate metrology of mask pattern variability, which are both relevant to EPE budgeting.
In this paper, we study the feasibility of direct aerial image measurements with the ZEISS AIMS® EUV tool for quantification of mask effects that impact EPE budget and OPC model accuracy. We demonstrate the application of aerial image metrology for OPC model calibration, pattern shift detection, quantitative mask metrology and for Optical process window characterization.
The aggressive reduction of semiconductor device dimensions drives many improvements in optical wafer metrology. Currently, chips with device feature sizes below 10 nm are in production which requires robust overlay metrology with sub-nm precision. We will present a compact dark-field Digital Holographic Microscope (df-DHM) that is able to measure overlay on small metrology targets from visible to infrared wavelengths. The coherent amplification and the aberration correction capabilities that is offered by df-DHM allow robust overlay metrology even on weak targets that are covered by absorbing layers. Measured data will be shown that demonstrate the capabilities of this metrology concept.
Background: Integrated circuits are fabricated layer by layer. It is crucial to their performance that these layers are well aligned to each other, and any undesired translation of a layer is called overlay. Thus far, overlay measurements have been limited to visible wavelengths, but the use of materials that are opaque to visible wavelengths necessitates measurements using infrared light.
Aim: We set out to demonstrate that an overlay sensor based on digital holographic microscopy can perform such overlay measurement at infrared wavelengths, while maintaining functionality at visible wavelengths.
Approach: This was done by constructing a breadboard setup that is capable of measuring overlay at wavelengths ranging from 400 to 1100 nm.
Results: Using the setup, we demonstrated good linearity between an applied amount of overlay and the measured amount. In addition, we demonstrated that the setup is only sensitive to structures at the top of the wafer. Measurements are therefore unaffected by the fact that Si is transparent at 1100 nm.
Conclusions: These results demonstrate the viability of an overlay sensor that is sensitive to visible and infrared light, allowing more freedom in choice of materials for integrated circuits.
Digital holographic microscopy allows access to the complex electric field, enabling computational propagation of light. This enables computational corrections for lens aberrations, which remove the requirement for antireflective coatings on the lens and enable imaging over a wide spectral range. This makes digital holographic microscopy an interesting candidate for overlay metrology on semiconductor wafers. We show that a single holographic image contains all data that is required for computing the overlay, by using a source with a limited coherence length and incoherently adding multiple measurements on a camera. As an additional benefit we show that such parallel acquisition improves the reproducibility of the experiment by eliminating noise sources that are common to the two measurements that typically constitute a single overlay measurement.
Paper reports a resistive type humidity sensing studies
of ZnO-SnO2 nanocomposite powder pellets prepared
through solid-state reaction route. When exposed to
humidity, resistance of pellets decreases with increase
in relative humidity from 10 to 90%. Sensing element
with 25 weight% of SnO2 in ZnO shows best results
with maximum sensitivity of 1.25 MΩ/%RH in 10-
90% relative humidity range. This sensing element
manifests smallest crystallite size of 60 nm as
measured from XRD and lowest grain size of 92 nm
calculated from SEM micrograph. This sensing
element manifests low hysteresis, less effect of ageing
and good reproducibility. The response and recovery
time of sensing element SZ-25 is found to be 92 and
480 seconds respectively.
KEYWORDS: Digital holography, Holograms, 3D image reconstruction, Digital recording, Spatial light modulators, Cameras, 3D displays, Holography, 3D metrology, Interferometers
The presence of a residual sphericity in a reference beam causes magnification in the reconstructed image in
digital holography. We discuss a method to estimate the relative sphericities in a multi-perspective multi-camera
digital hologram recording unit. The digital holograms can then be compensated with numerical quadratic phase
factors so that the object appears with the same magnification in all the reconstructions.
We discuss some common sources of noise which affect the quality of reconstruction in digital holography. We show
that by using holograms obtained with independent illumination patterns, we can suppress these noise sources in a
unified manner and improve the image quality while reducing the memory usage.
We examine some fundamental theoretical limits on the ability of practical digital holography (DH) systems to resolve detail in an image. Unlike conventional diffraction-limited imaging systems, where a projected image of the limiting aperture is used to define the system performance, there are at least three major effects that determine the performance of a DH system: (i) The spacing between adjacent pixels on the CCD, (ii) an averaging effect introduced by the finite size of these pixels, and (iii) the finite extent of the camera face itself. Using a theoretical model, we define a single expression that accounts for all these physical effects. With this model, we explore several different DH recording techniques: off-axis and inline, considering both the dc terms, as well as the real and twin images that are features of the holographic recording process. Our analysis shows that the imaging operation is shift variant and we demonstrate this using a simple example. We examine how our theoretical model can be used to optimize CCD design for lensless DH capture. We present a series of experimental results to confirm the validity of our theoretical model, demonstrating recovery of super-Nyquist frequencies for the first time.
We show how the reconstruction of digital holograms can be speeded up on ordinary computers by precomputing
the chirp factor in the Fresnel transform for a given detector array size. The
speedup in time is shown for various hologram sizes. We also run the same algorithm on a Nvidia GPU. The
speedup and the error introduced due to quantizing to different levels is investigated. Additionally a variance based
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