Depositive shielding for fiducial protection from redeposition
AssigneeFEI Company
InventorsSean Morgan-Jones, Mark Najarian, Michael Schmidt, Victoriea Bird
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Redeposition of substrate material on a fiducial resulting from charged particle beam (CPB) or laser beam milling of a substrate can be reduced with a shield formed on the substrate surface. The shield typically has a suitable height that can be selected based on proximity of an area to be milled to the fiducial. The shield can be formed with the milling beam using beam-assisted chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The same or different beams can be used for milling and beam-assisted CVD.
Claims23
A method, comprising:
- selecting an area of a substrate that includes a fiducial;
- forming a shield proximate the fiducial;
- and
- processing the substrate in a selected area situated so that shield is between the fiducial and the selected area.
A substrate, comprising:
- a fiducial defined on the substrate;
- and
- a shield having a shield height, the shield situated at a distance of less than two shield heights from the fiducial, wherein the shield is situated between a processing area and the fiducial.
A charged particle beam (CPB) processing system, comprising:
- a CPB source situated to direct a focused CPB to a substrate having a fiducial;
- at least one CVD source operable to produce a shield on the substrate in response to the CPB from the CPB source;
- and
- a processor operable to:
- direct the CPB source to form the shield on the substrate with the CPB and the CVD source, wherein the shield has a shield height and is situated at a distance of less than two times the shield height from the fiducial,
- direct the CPB source to process a selected area of the substrate, the selected area situated on a distal side of the shield with respect to the fiducial.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.