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US 12,650,375 B2Granted
Spectroscopic ellipsometry system for thin film imaging
AssigneeBruker Nano, Inc.
InventorsEmad Zawaideh, Chris Claypool
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An imaging spectroscopic ellipsometry apparatus and method configured to measure thin films with high spatial resolution. The apparatus includes a rotating compensator that enables to simultaneously collect both spectrometric ellipsometric data and ellipsometric imaging with the use of the same measurement beam of light. Collecting both data sets simultaneously increases the information content for analysis and affords a substantial increase in measurement performance.
Claims20
An imaging spectroscopic ellipsometry apparatus comprising:
- an illumination arm, and
- a measurement arm that includes:
- a measurement arm polarizer element configured to receive light, which has been delivered from the illumination arm to a pre-defined sample plane in an incident collimated light impinging thereon and transformed into a reflected collimated light at the pre-defined sample plane, directly from the pre-defined sample plane and to convert said reflected collimated light into a combination of first measurement collimated light and second measurement collimated light that have mutually orthogonal linear polarizations and that propagate colinearly,
- a spectrometer system positioned to receive the first measurement collimated light along a first axis and configured to carry out spectrometric ellipsometric measurements of a medium at the pre-defined sample plane in said first measurement collimated light, and
- an ellipsometric optical imaging system including a first optical detector positioned to receive the second measurement collimated light along a second axis that is transverse to the first axis and configured to carry out ellipsometric imaging measurements of the medium at the pre-defined sample plane in said second measurement collimated light.
2 more elements
A method comprising:
- delivering polychromatic light through an illumination art of an imaging spectroscopic ellipsometry apparatus in a form of a collimated elliptically polarized polychromatic light to a pre-defined sample plane;
- transforming said collimated elliptically polarized polychromatic light into a reflected collimated polychromatic light at the pre-defined sample plane;
- receiving said reflected collimated polychromatic light at a measurement arm polarizer element of a measurement arm of said apparatus directly from said pre-defined sample plane;
- in the measurement arm, converting said reflected collimated polychromatic light into a combination of a first measurement collimated light and a second measurement collimated light that have mutually orthogonal linear polarizations and that propagate along respective mutually transverse axes;
- performing spectrometric ellipsometric measurements at a plurality of measurement locations of a medium at the pre-defined sample plane with a spectrometer system of the measurement arm in the first measurement collimated light received at the spectrometer system;
- and
- carrying out ellipsometric imaging measurements at said plurality of the measurement locations of said medium with an ellipsometric optical imaging system of the measurement arm in the second measurement collimated light.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.