Process Window Centering for 22 nm Lithography

Author

Buengener, Ralf ; Boye, Carol ; Rhoads, Bryan N. ; Chong, Sang Y. ; Tejwani, Charu ; Burns, Sean D. ; Stamper, Andrew D. ; Nafisi, Kourosh ; Brodsky, Colin J. ; Fan, Susan S. ; Kini, Sumanth ; Hahn, Roland

Author_Institution

Globalfoundries, Hopewell Junction, NY, USA

Volume

24

Issue

2

fYear

2011

fDate

5/1/2011 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

165

Lastpage

172

Abstract

Process window centering (PWC) is an efficient methodology to validate or adjust and center the overall process window for a particular lithography layer by detecting systematic and random defects. The PWC methodology incorporates a defect inspection and analysis of the entire die that can be automated to provide timely results. This makes it a good compromise between focus exposure matrix, where centering is based only on critical dimension measurements of a few specific structures and process window qualification which provides very detailed defect inspection and analysis, but is more time consuming for lithography centering. This paper describes the application of the PWC methodology for 22 nm lithography centering in IBM´s Albany, NY, and East Fishkill, NY, development facilities using KLA-Tencor´s 28xx brightfield defect inspection system.

Keywords

inspection; lithography; critical dimension measurements; defect inspection system; focus exposure matrix; lithography layer; process window centering; random defect detection; size 22 nm; systematic defect detection; Finite element methods; Inspection; Layout; Lithography; Resists; Systematics; Defect inspection; lithography; process window;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Semiconductor Manufacturing, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0894-6507

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TSM.2011.2106807

Filename

5688481