System and methods for thermally conditioning a wafer in a charged particle beam apparatus
AssigneeASML Netherlands B.V.
InventorsMartijn Petrus Christianus VAN HEUMEN, Jeroen Gerard GOSEN
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Abstract
An improved particle beam inspection apparatus, and more particularly, a particle beam inspection apparatus including a thermal conditioning station for preconditioning a temperature of a wafer is disclosed. The charged particle beam apparatus may scan the wafer to measure one or more characteristics of the structures on the wafer and analyze the one or more characteristics. The charged particle beam apparatus may further determine a temperature characteristic of the wafer based on the analysis of the one or more characteristics of the structure and adjust the thermal conditioning station based on the temperature characteristic.
Claims21
1-15. (canceled)
A non-transitory computer readable medium including a set of instructions that is executable by one or more processors of a controller to cause the controller to perform a method for adjusting a charged particle beam apparatus with a thermal conditioning station, the method comprising:
- acquiring one or more characteristics of a wafer on a wafer stage, wherein a temperature of the wafer is preconditioned by the thermal conditioning station before the wafer is transferred onto the wafer stage for scanning with the charged particle beam apparatus;
- determining a temperature characteristic based on the one or more characteristics of the wafer;
- and
- adjusting the thermal conditioning station based on the temperature characteristic of the wafer.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.