Front face and edge inspection
AssigneeKLA-Tencor Technologies Corporation
InventorSylvain Muckenhirn
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A surface and edge inspection system and the method for inspecting a substrate are disclosed. An edge inspection tool performs edge inspection of one or more substrates while a surface inspection tool performs surface inspection of a different substrate. A recipe for the surface inspection may be modified based on the results of the edge inspection.
Claims11
A method for inspecting substrates, comprising:
- a) performing a scanning measurement across a front surface of a first substrate with a surface inspection tool according to a standard recipe;
- b) performing an edge inspection of one or more additional substrates with an edge inspection tool before or while performing the scanning measurement;
- c) determining whether one or more of the additional substrates is “at risk” based on a result of the edge inspection;
- d) modifying the standard recipe based on the result of the edge inspection of one or more of the additional substrates determined to be “at risk”, thereby producing a modified recipe;
- and
- e) performing a scanning measurement across a front surface of one or more of the additional substrates with the surface inspection tool according to the modified recipe.
A processor readable medium having processor readable instructions embodied therein for implementing a method for inspecting substrates on an apparatus having a surface inspection tool and an edge inspection tool, the processor readable instructions comprising:
- an instruction for performing a scanning measurement across a front surface of a first substrate with the surface inspection tool according to a standard recipe;
- an instruction for performing edge inspection of one or more additional substrates while performing the scanning measurement;
- an instruction for determining whether one or more of the additional substrates is “at risk” based on a result of the edge inspection;
- an instruction for modifying the standard recipe based on the result of the edge inspection of one or more of the additional substrates determined to be “at risk”, thereby producing a modified recipe;
- and
- an instruction for performing scanning measurement across front surfaces of one or more of the additional substrates with the surface inspection tool according to the modified recipe.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.