Semiconductor equipment vendor Applied Materials Inc. has introduced an eBeam metrology system designed to measure dimensions of chips patterned with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and emerging high-NA EUV lithography.
Called VeritySEM 10, the architecture enables low landing energy at two times better resolution compared to conventional critical dimension scanning electronic microscopes (CD-SEMs). It also provides a 30% faster scan rate to further reduce interaction with the photoresist and increase throughput.
The leading resolution and scan rate provide improved control of EUV and High-NA EUV lithography and etch processes to help chipmakers accelerate process development and increase yield.
The system adopted by chipmakers for these SD-SEMs application includes gate-all-around (GAA) logic transistors and 3D NAND memories.
Specifically in GAA, the VeritySEM 10 is being used to measure and characterize the selective epitaxy process, which is key to transistor performance. In 3D NAND memories, the system provides a large field of view and high depth of focus to measure entire staircase interconnect structures and help tune etch process recipes.
Applied Materials said it has received commercial interest from logic and memory companies and it has shipped more than 30 systems over the past year.
What is CD-SEMs?
CD-SEMs is used to take sub-nanometer measurements of patterns once a lithography scanner transfers them from a mask to a photoresist.
These measurements calibrate the lithography process performance continuously to ensure the patterns are correct before etched into a wafer. CD-SEMs are also used after etching to correlate intended patterns with on-wafer results.
The technology helps control the etch process and enable a feedback loop between lithography and etch that gives engineers highly correlated data sets for holistic process tuning.
