This invention generally relates to optical systems for measurement of characteristics of samples and particularly to optical systems that enable measurements in both vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) and ultraviolet-visible spectral regions.
For a number of industrial applications, it is useful to determine the surface metrology of samples such as thickness of thin films, their refractive indices and the profile parameters of surface features such as grating on semiconductor wafers. A number of metrology tools are now available for performing optical measurements on semiconductors. Such tools can include spectroscopic reflectometers and spectroscopic ellipsometers. The size of semiconductor devices on silicon wafers has been continually reduced. The shrinking of semiconductor devices has imposed more requirements on the sensitivity of wafer inspection instruments in detecting contaminant particles and pattern defects. One approach to improve the sensitivity of metrology measurements is to employ electromagnetic radiation of shorter wavelengths such as vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) wavelength and ultraviolet-visible wavelength. VUV light is absorbed mainly by oxygen and water molecules generally present in an ambient environment. Therefore, nitrogen or inert gas purging or vacuum is required to extend optical measurement down to vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) range. Examples of such inert gas purging are described, e.g., in US Patent Application Publication 20040150820, which is incorporated herein by reference. Some current broadband spectroscopic ellipsometry (BBSE) systems may use a method of purging Nitrogen gas on/around the measurement spot instead of purging the whole system. However, there is an interaction between the purging N2 gas and physisorbed materials (hydrocarbons, contaminants, etc henceforth referred to as Airborne molecular Contaminants or AMC), which results typically in a change to the effective thickness of the AMC layer on wafer during film thickness measurements in the ultraviolet-visible spectral region, causing the precision of the measurement to be higher.
It is within this context that embodiments of the present invention arise.
Objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent upon reading the following detailed description and upon reference to the accompanying drawings in which:
Although the following detailed description contains many specific details for the purposes of illustration, anyone of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that many variations and alterations to the following details are within the scope of the invention. Accordingly, the exemplary embodiments of the invention described below are set forth without any loss of generality to, and without imposing limitations upon, the claimed invention.
By way of example, the optical system 100 may be a spectroscopic ellipsometer, a single-wavelength ellipsometer, a spectroscopic reflectometer or a single wavelength reflectometer. Examples of such optical systems include Spectra Fx 100 and Spectra Fx 200 optical thin film metrology systems available from KLA-Tencor Corporation of San Jose, Calif.
The optical system 100 also includes a purge gas source 103 and a controller 116. The purge gas source 103 typically supplies a gas that does not substantially absorb VUV radiation, such as nitrogen, argon, neon and other inert gases. The controller 116 is operably coupled to the gas source 103 and the detector 106 in a feedback loop to control purge gas flow rates to the focus housing 109, illumination optics housing 124, collection optics housing 120, the main housing 126 and detector housing 107. The controller 116 may be configured to control separate flows of purge gas to two or more of the light source 108, focus housing 109, illumination optics housing 124, main housing 126, collection optics housing 120 and/or detector housing 107. By way of example and without limitation, the gas source 103 may include a gas manifold 104 to facilitate supply of purge gas to different portions of a beam path for the system 100. The gas manifold 104 may be coupled to two or more of the light source 108, illumination optics housing 124, main housing 126, collection optics housing 120 and/or detector housing 107 through separate gas lines. Each gas line may have a valve 105 operably coupled to the controller 116. The valves 105 may open, close or throttle gas flow through them in response to signals from the controller 116.
The controller 116 may operate in response to code instructions 118, which include instructions that direct the purge gas source 103 to adjust the flow rate of purged gas into the focus housing 109, illumination optics housing 124, collection optics housing 120, the main housing 126 and detector housing 107. As shown in
The system bus 227 can be any of several types of bus structure(s) including the memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus or external bus, and/or a local bus using any variety of available bus architectures including, but not limited to, 11-bit bus, Industrial Standard Architecture (ISA), Micro-Channel Architecture (MSA), Extended ISA (EISA), Intelligent Drive Electronics (IDE), VESA Local Bus (VLB), Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), Universal Serial Bus (USB), Advanced Graphics Port (AGP), Personal Computer Memory Card International Association bus (PCMCIA), and Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI).
The system memory 205 may include volatile memory and/or nonvolatile memory. The basic input/output system (BIOS), comprising the basic routines to transfer information between elements within the computer 201, such as during start-up, may be stored in nonvolatile memory. By way of illustration, and not limitation, nonvolatile memory may include read only memory (ROM), programmable ROM (PROM), electrically programmable ROM (EPROM), electrically erasable ROM (EEPROM), or flash memory. Volatile memory includes random access memory (RAM), which acts as external cache memory. By way of illustration and not limitation, RAM is available in many forms such as synchronous RAM (SRAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM), synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), double data rate SDRAM (DDR SDRAM), enhanced SDRAM (ESDRAM), Synchlink DRAM (SLDRAM), and direct Rambus RAM (DRRAM). The code instructions 118 may be stored in system memory 205 in the form of processor readable instructions that can be executed on the processing unit 203. The code instructions may include instructions that direct the purge gas source 103 to adjust the flow rate of purged gas into the focus housing 109, illumination optics housing 124, collection optics housing 120, the main housing 126 and detector housing 107.
The computer 201 may optionally include removable/non-removable, volatile/non-volatile computer storage medium 209, for example disk storage. Storage medium 209 may include, but is not limited to, devices like a magnetic disk drive, floppy disk drive, tape drive, Jaz drive, Zip drive, LS-100 drive, flash memory card, or memory stick. In addition, storage medium 209 may include storage media separately or in combination with other storage media including, but not limited to, an optical disk drive such as a compact disk ROM device (CD-ROM), CD recordable drive (CD-R Drive), CD rewritable drive (CD-RW Drive) or a digital versatile disk ROM drive (DVD-ROM). To facilitate connection of the disk storage devices 209 to the system bus 227, a removable or non-removable interface is typically used such as interface 207.
The computer system 200 may also includes input devices 219 such as a pointing device such as a mouse, trackball, stylus, touch pad, keyboard, microphone, joystick, and the like. These and other input devices may connect to the processing unit 203 through the system bus 227 via interface port(s) 213. Interface port(s) 213 include, for example, a serial port, a parallel port, a game port, and a universal serial bus (USB). Output device(s) 217 use some of the same type of ports as input device(s) 219. Thus, for example, a USB port can be used to provide input to the computer 201 from the detector 106, and to output information from computer 201 to an output device 217 or to the purge gas source 103. Output adapter 211 is provided to illustrate that there are some output devices 217 like monitors, speakers, and printers, among other output devices 217, which may require special adapters. The output adapters 211 may include, by way of illustration and not limitation, video and sound cards that provide a means of connection between the output device 217 and the system bus 227.
The computer system 200 may also include a network interface 221 to enable the device to communicate with the metrology tool 102 and/or other devices over a network, e.g., a local area network or a wide area network, such as the internet. Communication connection 215 refers to the hardware/software employed to connect the network interface 221 to the bus 227. While communication connection 215 is shown for illustrative clarity inside computer 201, it can also be external to computer 201. The hardware/software necessary for connection to the network interface 221 includes, for exemplary purposes only, internal and external technologies such as, modems including regular telephone grade modems, cable modems and DSL modems, ISDN adapters, and Ethernet cards.
Prior art broadband spectroscopic ellipsometry (BBSE) systems currently use a local purging method in which a gas, such as nitrogen, flows only in volumes around the beam path. For an optical system of the type depicted in
Lowering N2 flow rates during the metrology measurement in the UV-Vis spectral region is acceptable since VUV radiation is not used in the measurement and is blocked in the illuminator optics 110. However, if the N2 flow rates are low and stay low for long durations, the overall purging quality may be degraded. The degree of degradation is partly a function of the duration of the reduced flow and the magnitude of the reduced N2 flow rate. Depending on the initial flow rates in the low flow mode, the recovery time of VUV signal, when the N2 flow changed to high flow rates, can vary. For example
As shown in
While the above is a complete description of the preferred embodiment of the present invention, it is possible to use various alternatives, modifications and equivalents. Therefore, the scope of the present invention should be determined not with reference to the above description but should, instead, be determined with reference to the appended claims, along with their full scope of equivalents. Any feature, whether preferred or not, may be combined with any other feature, whether preferred or not. In the claims that follow, the indefinite article “A”, or “An” refers to a quantity of one or more of the item following the article, except where expressly stated otherwise. The appended claims are not to be interpreted as including means-plus-function limitations, unless such a limitation is explicitly recited in a given claim using the phrase “means for.”
This application claims the benefit of priority of co-pending U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/886,899, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
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Number | Date | Country | |
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20080180698 A1 | Jul 2008 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
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60886899 | Jan 2007 | US |