Integrated measuring instrument
AssigneeFEI Company
InventorSylvain Muckenhirn
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A surface analyzing system including in one system both an integrating optical instrument, such as a scatterometer, and individual-feature-measuring instrument, such as a scanning probe microscope or a beam imaging system, for example, a scanning electron microscope. In a preferred embodiment, the two instruments are capable of characterizing a wafer held on a common stage. The stage may be movable a predetermined displacement to allow the same area of the wafer to be characterized by a scatterometer at one position of the stage and to be characterized by the scanning probe microscope or beam imaging system. The scatterometer can rapidly measure wafers to indicate whether a problem exists, and the scanning probe microscope can perform detailed measurements on wafers flagged by the scatterometer.
Claims20
A method of using an integrated scatterometer and atomic force microscope to monitor a fabrication process, comprising:
- mounting a work piece in work piece holder in a single system that includes both an atomic force microscope and a scatterometer;
- measuring a feature in a test measurement area using the atomic force microscope;
- generating scatterometer library graphs using the atomic force microscope measurement as input to a library generation program;
- measuring a test measurement area on the work piece using the scatterometer and the generated library graphs to determine a measured parameter of the measurement area;
- and
- if the measured parameter fails to meet a specified criterion, measuring one or more features of the work piece using the atomic force microscope without removing the work piece from work piece holder of the single system, thereby allowing features in the area measured by the scatterometer to be readily measured on the allowing the atomic force microscope if the scatterometer results are outside of specification or indeterminate and allowing the atomic force microscope to provide input for the generation of accurate library graph for use with the scatterometer.
A method of monitoring a fabrication process, comprising:
- mounting a work piece in work piece holder in a single system that includes both an integrating optical instrument and an individual-feature-measuring instrument;
- measuring a test measurement area on the work piece using the integrating optical instrument to determine a measured parameter of the measurement area;
- and
- if the measured parameter fails to meet a specified criterion, measuring one or more features of the work piece using the individual-feature-measuring instrument without removing the work piece from the single system.
A integrated measuring system, comprising:
- a work piece holder for holding a sample to be measured;
- an integrating optical instrument having a radiation source for irradiating an area of said work piece and an optical detector receiving radiation reflected from said area;
- and
- an individual-feature-measuring instrument for measuring the same work piece as measured by the integrating optical instrument, the individual-feature-measuring instrument being positioned in the same system as the integrated optical instrument so that a same work piece can be readily measured by both instruments.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.