Paper
12 February 1997 Photomask metrology in the era of neolithography
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Abstract
The appearance of smaller photomask feature sizes, high density patterns, and optical enhancements such as phase shifters and OPC features, and the increasing importance of subresolution mask characteristics, can severely challenge traditional mask metrology techniques. Such high resolution imaging techniques as SEMs and scanning probe microscopes can present serious metrology problems in modeling, throughput, and accuracy. Accordingly, photomask metrology must be examined in the larger context of mask design, specification, manufacture, and application. Critical mask features may not always be measured directly as in the past. Instead, their optical effects can be measured and compared with specifications. Discrepancies indicate needed corrections in mask fabrication process control. In the early days of integrated circuit lithography, an era which might be termed paleolithography, the pattern on the photomask was transferred conformally to the wafer. Mask CDs were measured directly in a metrology microscope and represented their corresponding wafer CDs. The optical transform from mask to wafer was simply the scalar exposure system reduction ratio. In the present era of neolithography, with wafer CDs near the exposure wavelength, this is no longer the case. The wafer exposure system performs a nonlinear optical transform on the mask pattern to produce an aerial image in the resist. OPC and mask phase shifters are manifestations of the inverse of this transform. The image in the developed resist depends on the mask pattern and the exposure and development parameters in nonlinear ways. These parameters can be optimized in software, but their effects are equally important in both mask design and mask metrology. A conceptualization of the photomask life cycle is presented showing the role of mask metrology in context. This approach can lead to practical solutions of the mask metrology problems in neolithography.
© (1997) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
James E. Potzick "Photomask metrology in the era of neolithography", Proc. SPIE 3236, 17th Annual BACUS Symposium on Photomask Technology and Management, (12 February 1997); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.284026
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Cited by 5 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Photomasks

Semiconducting wafers

Metrology

Phase shifts

Cadmium sulfide

Optical proximity correction

Microscopes

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