Method and system to for rapid inspection of photolithography reticle

A reticle inspection system, comprising:

• scanning resources configured to capture a first scan image of a reticle;
• memory resources configured to store a reference image;
• and
• an analysis model trained with a machine learning process to generate a difference threshold, to:
• generate a difference threshold;
• store a reference image;
• generate a first relative difference value by comparing the first scan image to the reference image;
• if the first relative difference value is less than or equal to the difference threshold, determine that the reticle is not defective and rewriting at least a portion of the reference image with the first scan image;
• if the first relative difference value is greater than the difference threshold, determine that the reticle is defective;
• output an indication to perform a photolithography process with the reticle after rewriting the reference image with at least a portion of the first scan image, wherein the scanning resources are configured to generate a second scan image of the reticle with the reticle inspection system;
• generating a second relative difference value by comparing the second scan image to the reference image;
• if the second relative difference value is less than or equal to the difference threshold, determining that the reticle is not defective;
• and
• if the second relative difference value is greater than the difference threshold, determining that the reticle is defective.

A system, comprising:

• scanning resources configured to capture a scan image of a reticle;
• memory resources configured to store a reference image;
• an analysis model;
• processing resources configured to train the analysis model with a machine learning process to detect whether a reticle is contaminated with a debris particle, wherein the scanning resources are configured to provide the scan image to the analysis mode, wherein the analysis model is configured to determine, based on the machine learning process, whether or not the reticle is contaminated with a debris particle by processing the scan image, and to determine a type of the debris particle with the analysis model.