Charged particle beam apparatus and method for calculating roughness index

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12505976-B2
Application number	US-202017909876-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 30, 2020
Priority date	Mar 30, 2020
Publication date	Dec 23, 2025
Grant date	Dec 23, 2025

Abstract

Roughness measurement corrects a machine difference utilizing first PSD data indicating power spectral density of a line pattern measured for a line pattern formed on a wafer for machine difference management by a reference machine in roughness index calculation and second PSD data indicating power spectral density of a line pattern measured for the line pattern formed on the wafer for machine difference management by a correction target machine are used to obtain a correction method for correcting the power spectral density of the second PSD data to the power spectral density of the first PSD data, power spectral density of a line pattern is measured as third PSD data from a scanning image of the line pattern, and corrected power spectral density obtained by correcting the power spectral density of the third PSD data by the obtained correction method is calculated.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1 . A method implemented by a scanning electron microscope (SEM) type length measurement apparatus comprising an objective lens, a deflector, a detector, an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter, an image processing unit, and a power spectral density (PSD) input unit for decreasing variation in roughness measurements made by SEMs in semiconductor fabrication, the method comprising:
receiving, by the PSD input unit, a first power spectral density (PSD) that indicates a power spectral density of a line pattern measured for a line pattern formed on a first wafer in advance by a second SEM; acquiring, by a first SEM under a specified optical condition including at least one of irradiation energy, probe current, detector type, or scanning speed, a scanning image of the line pattern formed on the first wafer by two-dimensionally scanning the line pattern with a charged particle beam, detecting electrons emitted from the line pattern with the detector, and converting a detection signal into a digital image via the A/D converter; determining a second PSD that indicates a power spectral density of the line pattern formed on the first wafer from the acquired scanning image by the first SEM; obtaining a correction method for correcting the power spectral density of the second PSD to the power spectral density of the first PSD; acquiring, by the first SEM under the same specified optical condition, a scanning image of a line pattern formed on a second wafer by two-dimensionally scanning the line pattern with the charged particle beam, detecting electrons emitted from the line pattern with the detector, and converting the detection signal into a digital image via the A/D converter; determining a third PSD that indicates a power spectral density of a line pattern formed on the second wafer from the acquired scanning image by the first SEM; calculating a corrected power spectral density obtained by correcting the power spectral density of the third PSD by the correction method; and calculating a roughness index of the line pattern formed on the second wafer by the first SEM using the corrected power spectral density, wherein the roughness index comprises at least one of a line edge roughness (LER) or a line width roughness (LWR).

2 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein
the first wafer is one of a plurality of wafers, and power spectral density of line patterns respectively formed on the plurality of wafers is the same.

3 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein
the first PSD and the second PSD are average values of power spectral density of line patterns measured for a plurality of line patterns formed on the first wafer.

4 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein
the first PSD is an average value of power spectral density of a line pattern measured for the line pattern formed on the first wafer by a plurality of reference charged particle beam apparatuses.

5 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein
an edge position of the line pattern formed on the second wafer is measured, and the LER is calculated as the roughness index of the line pattern formed on the second wafer, or a line width of the line pattern formed on the second wafer is measured, and the LWR is calculated as the roughness index of the line pattern formed on the second wafer.

6 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein
as the correction method, a difference between the power spectral density of the second PSD and the power spectral density of the first PSD is obtained, and the power spectral density of the third PSD is corrected based on the difference.

7 . The method according to claim 6 , wherein
the difference is smoothed to form a smoothed difference, and the power spectral density of the third PSD is corrected based on the smoothed difference.

8 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein
as the correction method, a ratio between the power spectral density of the second PSD and the power spectral density of the first PSD is obtained, and the power spectral density of the third PSD is corrected based on the ratio.

9 . The method according to claim 8 , wherein
the ratio is smoothed to form a smoothed ratio, and the power spectral density of the third PSD is corrected based on the smoothed ratio.

10 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein
as the correction method, a model to which the power spectral density of the second PSD is input and from which the power spectral density of the first PSD is output is learned, and the power spectral density of the third PSD is input to a learned model, thereby correcting the power spectral density of the third PSD.

11 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the first PSD corresponds to the specified optical condition used by the first SEM during the acquiring.

12 . The method of claim 1 , wherein a random-noise component independent of frequency is removed from the first, second, and third PSDs prior to obtaining the correction method and calculating the corrected power spectral density.

13 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the correction method comprises smoothing a difference or a ratio between the second PSD and the first PSD and applying the smoothed result to the third PSD.

14 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the correction method comprises a supervised machine-learning model trained to output the first PSD from the second PSD, and the third PSD is input to the trained model to produce the corrected power spectral density.

Assignees

• Hitachi High Tech Corp

Inventors

• Bizen Daisuke
• Sakai Kei
• Kakuta Junichi
• Shirai Masumi
• Yamazaki Minoru

Classifications

• H01J2237/2817

  Pattern inspection · CPC title

• H01J2237/24578

  Spatial variables, e.g. position, distance · CPC title

• H01J37/28

  with scanning beams {(H01J37/268, H01J37/292, H01J37/2955 take precedence)} · CPC title

• H01J37/244

  Detectors; Associated components or circuits therefor · CPC title

• G06T2207/30148

  Semiconductor; IC; Wafer · CPC title