US 5,978,085 A · Apparatus method of measurement and method of data analysis for correction of optical system

Abstract

A reticle consisting of a multiplicity of small openings corresponding to separate and distinguishable points is put in the reticle plane. This reticle is imaged down through an opening O in aperture plate AP. A corresponding multiplicity of spots are created at the image plane of the optical system. These spots have spot centroids relative to the original separate and distinguishable points in the reticle. These points, however, are deviated from their diffraction limited positions by the average of grad.phi.(u)) over the corresponding ray bundle. The opening O in the aperture plate samples a discrete portion of the entrance pupil. With points spread out over an area of size 2*NAo*za, ray bundles with chief rays covering the entire entrance pupil will be projected down to image plane IP. The above outlined procedure is extended to analyzing the wavefront at a multiplicity of field points over the entire lens train. The process includes using an aperture plate AP consisting of a multiplicity of openings O. Each opening O is centered underneath a neighborhood of points that is accepted into the entrance pupil of the imaging objective. Points passing through all openings O will produce in the wafer plane a number of spot arrays corresponding to the number of openings O. The totality of all the arrays of spots whose centroids can be measured and reconstructed yield an aberrated wavefront .phi.(u;x) at a number of discrete field points x.

Claims19

Dependent claims

A method for analysis of a lens train for taking an image from a reticle plane and relaying the image to a image plane, the method comprising the steps of:

providing a reticle consisting of a multiplicity of separate and distinguishable points in the reticle plane;
providing an aperture plate at a distance from the reticle having at least one opening;
imaging at least a portion of the reticle through the at least one opening in the aperture plate to create a multiplicity of spots at the image plane, the multiplicity of spots having spot centroids relative to the separate and distinguishable points in the reticle deviated from diffraction limited positions by an average of grad(.phi.(u)) over the diffraction limited positions of the spots produced by a diffraction limited lens train and corresponding spots passing through the at least one opening.

An in situ interferometer for insertion to a reticle plane of a stepper for transmitting through lenses of the stepper and printing to a wafer plane of the stepper interferometry data comprising in combination:

a housing for insertion to the reticle plane of the stepper;
means defining at least one aperture attached to the housing for passing a bundle of diverging rays through the aperture;
an aperture lens overlying and corresponding to the aperture attached to the housing, the aperture lens for focusing light of the stepper to the aperture for transmitting light through the aperture to the lenses of the stepper for projection to the wafer plane of the stepper;
and,
a first reticle having a pattern between the aperture lens and aperture for imparting to the focusing light from the aperture lens the pattern for printing at the wafer plane of the stepper.

2 more elements

A method for in situ interferometric measurement of a stepper comprising the steps of:

providing a housing for insertion to a reticle plane of the stepper, the housing including,
means defining at least one an aperture attached to the housing for passing a bundle of diverging rays through the aperture;
an aperture lens overlying the aperture attached to the housing, the aperture lens for focusing light of the stepper to the aperture for transmitting light through the aperture to lenses of the stepper for projection to a wafer plane of the stepper;
and,
a first reticle having a pattern between the aperture lens and aperture for imparting to transmitted light image the pattern for printing at the wafer plane of the stepper;
providing at the wafer plane of the stepper a regular pattern of images;
projecting the pattern from the reticle plane by imaging light on the aperture lens to have the pattern of the first reticle project about the regular pattern of images to enable relative projected placement of the pattern from the reticle plane relative to the regular pattern of images to indicate optical data related to at least distortion and curvature of field of the stepper.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Apparatus method of measurement and method of data analysis for correction of optical system

Life of this patent

Apparatus method of measurement and method of data analysis for correction of optical system

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims19