Back to results
US 2024/0212976 A1Published application
In-line depth measurements by afm
AssigneeApplied Materials Israel Ltd.
InventorYehuda Zur
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Loading patent…
Loading patent…
AssigneeApplied Materials Israel Ltd.
InventorYehuda Zur
Estimating the term…
A method of evaluating a region of interest of a sample with a sample evaluation tool that includes a focused ion beam (FIB) column, a scanning electron microscope (SEM) column, and an atomic force microscope (AFM) instrument, the method comprising: transferring the sample into in a vacuum chamber of the sample evaluation tool; acquiring a plurality of two-dimensional images of the region of interest over a plurality of iterations of a delayering process by: (a) positioning the region of interest under a field of view of the FIB column; (b) milling a layer of material from the region of interest with the FIB column; (c) moving the region of interest under a field of view of the SEM column; (d) imaging the region of interest with the SEM column and measuring a depth of the milled layer in the region of interest with the AFM instrument; and repeating steps (a)-(d) a plurality of times without removing the sample from the vacuum chamber.
A method of evaluating a region of interest of a sample with a sample evaluation tool that includes a focused ion beam (FIB) column, a scanning electron microscope (SEM) column, and an atomic force microscope (AFM) instrument, the method comprising:
The method of evaluating a region of interest of a sample set forth in claim further comprising generating a three-dimensional data cube representing the region of interest by stacking the plurality of two-dimensional images on top of each other in an order in which they were acquired.
The method of evaluating a region of interest of a sample set forth in claim wherein a height of each two-dimensional image that is part of the three-dimensional data cube is determined by AFM measurements.
The method of evaluating a region of interest of a sample set forth in claim wherein, during each iteration of the delaying process, milling a layer of material from the region of interest with the FIB column comprises scanning a focused ion beam generated by the FIB column across the region of interest a plurality of times prior to moving the region of interest under the field of view of the SEM column.
The method of evaluating a region of interest of a sample set forth in claim wherein during each iteration of the delaying process, an image of a milled layer is generated with the SEM column immediately prior to measuring a depth of the milled layer with the AFM instrument.
The method of evaluating a region of interest of a sample set forth in claim wherein during each iteration of the delaying process, a depth of the milled layer with the AFM instrument is measured immediately prior to generating an image of a milled layer with the SEM column.
The method of evaluating a region of interest of a sample set forth in claim wherein the step of acquiring a plurality of two-dimensional images of the region of interest further comprising aligning the plurality of two-dimensional images to each other prior to generating the three-dimensional data cube.
The method of evaluating a region of interest of a sample set forth in claim wherein the sample is a semiconductor wafer.
A system for evaluating a region of a sample, the system comprising:
A non-transitory computer-readable memory that stores a plurality of computer-readable instructions for evaluating a region of interest on a sample by:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.