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US 11,378,532 B2Granted
Inspection system and inspection method to qualify semiconductor structures
AssigneesCarl Zeiss SMT GmbH, Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH
InventorsBrett Lewis, Wilhelm Kuehn, Deying Xia, Shawn McVey, Ulrich Mantz
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Abstract
An inspection system serves to qualify semiconductor structures. The inspection system has an ion beam source for space-resolved exposition of the structures to be qualified with an ion beam. The inspection system also includes a secondary ion detection device with a mass spectrometer. The mass spectrometer is configured to measure an ion mass to charge ratio in a given bandwidth.
Claims20
An inspection system, comprising:
- an ion beam source configured to expose semiconductor structures with an ion beam in a spatially-resolved manner;
- and
- a secondary ion detection device comprising a mass spectrometer configured to simultaneously measure an ion mass to charge ratio in a given bandwidth,
- wherein the inspection system is configured to qualify the semiconductor structures.
1 more element
A method, comprising:
- raw review of a semiconductor structure to identify qualification volume candidates;
- and
- detailed review of the qualification volume candidates identified in the raw review,
- wherein, for each qualification volume candidate, the detailed review comprises:
- spatially-resolved ion beam sputtering;
- detecting secondary ions;
- and
- within an ion mass to charge ratio bandwidth, simultaneously using mass spectrometry to continuously analyze the detected secondary ions.
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Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.