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16 March 2017 Impact of noise sources and optical design on defect detection sensitivity in extreme ultraviolet actinic pattern inspection tool
Yow-Gwo Wang, Andrew R. Neureuther, Patrick P. Naulleau
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Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS, Vol. 16, Issue 1, 013504 (March 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMM.16.1.013504
Abstract
We discuss the impact of various noise sources and the optical design in bright field extreme ultraviolet (EUV) actinic inspection of mask features for defects in the patterned absorber. It is shown that an optimum pixel size is needed to maximize the defect signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to balance the trade-off in increasing signal strength with shot noise from defect signal and the background pattern intensity (mask layout image) and speckle noise from the mask blank roughness. Moreover, we consider defocus showing that the EUV mask phase effect has an asymmetric impact on pattern defect SNR’s through-focus behavior. The impact of defocus limits inspection performance based on defect SNR. Using critical defect sizes in a case study, we show the defect SNR performance of the limiting case and discuss the possibility of utilizing a nominal defocus in the inspection system to leverage the phase effect of EUV mask absorber to improve the defect SNR. A 50% improvement in defect SNR is shown to be possible by introducing a −50  nm nominal defocus into the bright field inspection system.
© 2017 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) 1932-5150/2017/$25.00 © 2017 SPIE
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Yow-Gwo Wang, Andrew R. Neureuther, and Patrick P. Naulleau "Impact of noise sources and optical design on defect detection sensitivity in extreme ultraviolet actinic pattern inspection tool," Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS 16(1), 013504 (16 March 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMM.16.1.013504
Received: 25 December 2016; Accepted: 28 February 2017; Published: 16 March 2017
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KEYWORDS
Signal to noise ratio
Interference (communication)
Inspection
Speckle
Extreme ultraviolet
Optical design
Cameras
CHORUS Article. This article was made freely available starting 16 March 2018
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