Studies on defect inspectivity and printability by using programmed-defect X-ray mask

Improvement in X-ray mask inspection system is essential for the realization of X-ray lithography. To evaluate the sensitivity of the present inspection system, we made a programmed X-ray mask, with various defects such as dimension error, position shift and absorber defect sizes for typical patterns of lines-and-spaces, hole and 2-dimension patterns. In this work, we evaluated the sensitivity of defect inspection system, and investigated the printability of the X-ray mask defects. Moreover, in order to specify the sensitivity of the next generation inspection system, we investigated the printability of the X-ray mask defects by using the X-ray lithographic simulator Toolset developed by University of Wisconsin. In this paper, we will present on defect inspectivity by using SEMSpec inspection system and the simulation.