Tighter specifications for the deposition of thin, highly uniform films with low stress require new
stress measurement techniques to resolve smallest deformations on the Nanometer scale.
Uniformity maps need to cover measurement areas from a few millimeters up to whole 300 mm
semiconductor wafers, which include small dies as well as lithography areas. Metrology able to
measure sample's flatness, nanotopography and film stress components on all the variety of the
samples, is very urgent today. Its accuracy and reproducibility should be at nanometers.
We discuss a combined solution using complementary measurements of nanotopography, substrate
thickness and film thickness, for the stress analysis and stress uniformity measurement on samples
with thin films and with very low stress causing shallow deformations having a curvature radius up
to several kilometers.
We present design of novel tool for end point detection of wafer thickness, and wafer topography employing low
coherence fiber optic interferometer, which optical length of the reference arm of the interferometer is monitored by
secondary long coherence length interferometer.
We present design of novel tool for characterization of wafer thickness and wafer topography employing fast low coherence fiber optic interferometer, which optical length of the reference arm of the interferometer is monitored by secondary long coherence length interferometer.
We propose novel tool employing both low coherence interferometer and spectrally resolved reflectometer sensor. We discuss application of this novel tool for measurements of the narrow high aspect ratio structures. We demonstrate that the visible reflectance spectrum of such structures allows us to extend range of interferometer to measure depth trenches with diameter from 2 μm to 1 mm, with reproducibility 10 nm - 100 nm depending on range of the thin film thickness. We also present of this novel tool for measurement of ultra-thin coated pressure sensor membranes. Application of an auxiliary spectral reflectometer allows correcting for systematic errors of low coherence interferometer which can be as large as 1.5 - 2 μm.
We presented novel tool employing both low coherence interferometer, and spectrally resolved reflectometer sensor. We discuss compatibility of this metrology with high resolution Raman spectroscopy. We present measurements of the stability of the Raman spectrometer indicating that system is capable to measure stress in silicon with reproducibility corresponding to 1 MPa and below. We propose integrated tool for simultaneous measurement of stress and displacement of the micro-machined electromechanical devices. Furthermore we propose Raman system configuration allowing measurement of all independent stress tensor components on submicron scale.
Low coherence optical interferometry has been proven to be an effective tool for characterization of thin and ultra-thin, transparent and non-transparent semiconductor Si and compound wafers, and MEMs structures for ex-situ and in-situ applications. We demonstrate that use of synchronously operating probes significantly reduces vibration noise observed in the system. We demonstrate that application of synchronized improves reproducibility of measurement with standard (without vibration insulation) 20 Hz acquisition rate low coherence dual probe interferometer from 1.5 um down to below 0.5 micrometer under vibration conditions of modern semiconductor manufacturing facilities. The synchronous configuration also results in reduction of the cost of the multi-probe system by employing one motion stage rather than several independently controlled stages. Finally we discuss recent progress in high-speed measurements allowing as to increase acquisition rate to >10 kHz (acquisition time shorter than 0.07 msec), while maintaining accuracy and reproducibility of standard slower system.
The most commonly employed tools for wafer thickness and topography metrology are based on capacitance method, which due to physical size of probes, and may not be suitable for direct measurement of multi-layer non-conductive wafers or Micro Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) structures. Recently developed that low coherence interferometry provides solution, which overcomes limitations of these methods. Selected MEMS applications including characterization of deep (high aspect) trenches and membrane structures have been also developed. The above listed applications were limited to measurements of relative distance between two optical interfaces in material transparent at the wavelength of probing radiation. Absolute distance gauging by fiber optic low coherence interferometer is difficult due to large thermal drift (of the order of 0.04 mm/K). We demonstrate that this drift is a result of thermal changes of refractive index of fiber optic glass. We present solution eliminating this drift is based on introduction of the additional reference plane in the signal arm of the Michelson interferometer. Use of this reference plane eliminates influence of changes of refractive index of glass fibers on result of measurement and improves thermal stability of low coherence interferometer by three orders of magnitude.
Novel nondestructive method based on low coherence optical interferometry for measurement of deep etched trenches in MEMs structures is presented. The proposed technique proves to provide very reproducible results and can be easily extended to metrology of other materials such as metals and dielectrics. We present results in real life semiconductor structures and discuss practical and fundamental limits of this technique
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