The combined reactivity of methacrylate and trifluoroacetate ligands make zinc-oxoclusters pattern 22–50 nm lines with high sensitivity by EUV Lithography.
Background: Reliable photomask metrology is required to reduce the risk of yield loss in the semiconductor manufacturing process as well as for the research on absorber materials. Actinic pattern inspection (API) of EUV reticles is a challenging problem to tackle with a conventional approach. For this reason, we developed RESCAN, an API platform based on coherent diffraction imaging. Aim: We want to verify the sensitivity of our platform to absorber and phase defects. Approach: We designed and manufactured two EUV mask samples with absorber and phase defects, and we inspected them with RESCAN in die-to-database mode. Results: We reconstructed an image of an array of programmed absorber defects, and we created a defect map of our sample. We inspected two programmed phase defect samples with buried structures of 3.5 and 7.8 nm height. Conclusions: We verified that RESCAN, in its current configuration, can detect absorber defects in random patterns and buried (phase) defects down to 50 × 50 nm 2 .
SMILE is a free and open-source software for the analysis of SEM images of lines and spaces patterns. We developed SMILE specifically to provide reliable metrology for images of wafers obtained with EUV interference lithography in the framework of the EUV resist screening program at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI). In its original version, SMILE offered the possibility to measure the critical dimension of the lines and their unbiased line-width roughness. Since its release, the software user interface and core functionalities have been substantially upgraded. In particular, SMILE is now capable of reporting unbiased line-edge roughness, performing primary statistical analyses of metrics evaluated over multiple images, and analyzing SEM images of contact arrays. In this paper, we will discuss the new functionalities of SMILE and the algorithms used to detect the contacts' edge profile.
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