Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is generally used for line edge roughness (LER) measurement; however, it is difficult to achieve high precision LER measurement of photoresist due to shrinkage caused by electron-beam (EB) exposure. We have developed a metrological tilting-atomic force microscopy (AFM), which has a tip-tilting mechanism to measure vertical sidewall. In the last conference, SPIE-AL-2023, we demonstrated quantitative evaluation of shrinkage of ArF photoresist due to EB exposure by measuring the pattern before and after EB exposure [Kizu et al., Proc. SPIE 12496, 1249605 (2023)]. In this study, we will demonstrate quantitative evaluation of shrinkage of EUV photoresist due to EB exposure by the AFM technology.
KEYWORDS: Shrinkage, Photoresist materials, Line edge roughness, Scanning electron microscopy, Atomic force microscopy, 3D metrology, Lithography, Metrology, Fractal analysis, Electron beams
BackgroundScanning electron microscopy (SEM) is commonly employed for line edge roughness (LER) measurements; however, achieving high-precision LER measurement of photoresists is difficult through this approach because electron beam (EB) exposure causes shrinkage of materials. Moreover, the differences in the 3D sidewall shape before and after shrinkage have not been investigated in detail.AimEvaluation of the impact of photoresist shrinkage induced by EB exposure on the sidewall roughness of a pattern.ApproachThe shrinkage was observed by measuring a photoresist pattern before and after EB exposure using atomic force microscopy with a tip-tilting technique (tilting-AFM).ResultsEB exposure smoothed the surface roughness, rounded the top corners, and reduced the pattern height. Roughness parameters evaluated via LER analysis showed that with shrinkage, the standard deviation (σ) and roughness exponent (α) decreased, while the correlation length (ξ) increased.ConclusionsThe results show that SEM-based LER measurements may lead to underestimation of σ and α, and the overestimation of ξ because of the effect of EB-induced shrinkage. Overall, we establish a tilting-AFM technique to evaluate the 3D shape of photoresist patterns without EB damage and with high resolution and low noise.
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is commonly used for line edge roughness (LER) measurement; however, it is difficult to achieve high-precision LER measurement of photoresists because exposure to an electron beam (EB) causes shrinkage of the materials. The differences in the 3D sidewall shape before and after shrinkage have not been investigated in detail. In this study, EB-induced photoresist shrinkage was observed by employing the atomic force microscopy with tip-tilting technique (tilting-AFM), which enables high-precision observation of the vertical sidewall of the pattern. In the experiment, the shrinkage deformation was observed by measuring the same photoresist pattern with the tilting-AFM before and after EB exposure (by SEM observation) on the pattern. The results show that the sidewall was smoothed by EB exposure. Further, the tendency of changes in LER (roughness parameters) was observed. This measurement technique can be used to better understand photoresist materials and to improve the LER measurement by SEM.
KEYWORDS: Photoresist materials, Line edge roughness, Metrology, Atomic force microscopy, Scanning electron microscopy, Lithography, Anisotropy, Silicon, 3D metrology, Reliability
Sidewall roughness of a photoresist pattern is important information to consider such as a relation between LERs (or LWRs) of the resist and etched pattern. It is well known that sidewall of a dry-etched Si pattern shows vertical striations (anisotropic roughness) [Kizu et al., JM3 19, 014003 (2020)]. On the other hand, in the case of photoresist, although there are several studies about photoresist sidewall roughness, neither high-resolution sidewall measurement nor roughness evaluation techniques has been established. In this study, we measured photoresist sidewall with high-resolution using a metrological tilting-AFM, which is able to measure vertical sidewall of a line pattern owing to tilted AFM-probe. The result showed the photoresist sidewall roughness has height dependency in contrast to that of a Si line pattern. Further result and discussion will be presented in the conference.
Background: Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)-based line edge roughness (LER) measurement suffers from an error due to noise in SEM image. Noise correction methods have been developed to obtain unbiased roughness results, however, there are still concerns in the viewpoint of measurement precision.
Aim: To develop an unbiased roughness analysis for highly precise LER measurement.
Approach: Combining the conventional unbiased roughness analysis with a profile-averaging method, where a line pattern is repeatedly measured and then the obtained profiles are aligned and averaged. The experimental result measured by SEM was verified using atomic force microscopy (AFM)-based LER metrology, which has higher reliability than SEM.
Results: The experimental evaluation showed that the proposed method can obtain roughness parameters more precisely than the conventional method.
Conclusions: When the noise in the line edge profile by SEM is too large, it is necessary to reduce the noise beforehand and then perform roughness analysis in order to obtain precise roughness results. The proposed method enables to measure LER with the highest precision using SEM. Additionally, the AFM-based LER metrology was demonstrated as a feasible technique to evaluate the performance of SEM-based LER metrology.
In this study, we developed a methodology to evaluate scanning electron microscopy (SEM)-based line edge roughness (LER) metrology. In particular, we used a metrological tilting atomic force microscopy (tilting-mAFM) as LER reference metrology. We analyzed the height-height correlation function (HHCF) of SEM line-edge profiles combining averaging and unbiased correction methods. The direct comparison of our method with tilting-mAFM enabled a precise evaluation of the SEM-based LER metrology. We demonstrated that a combination of unbiased HHCF and averaging methods with appropriate condition enabled relatively precise measurement of three roughness parameters. We observed that, for precise roughness evaluation, reducing noise in the line-edge profiles is important before performing the HHCF analysis and unbiased correction.
Background: Conventional scanning electron microscopy (SEM) that is used for 2D top-view metrology, a classical line edge roughness (LER) measurement technique, is incapable of measuring 3D structures of a nanoscale line pattern. For LER measurements, SEM measurement generates a single line-edge profile for the 3D sidewall roughness, although the line-edge profile differs at each height in the 3D sidewall.
Aim: To develop an evaluation method of SEM-based LER measurement techniques and to verify how the 3D sidewall shape is reflected in the SEM’s 2D result.
Approach: Direct comparison by measuring an identical location of a line pattern by SEM and an atomic force microscopy (AFM) with the tip-tilting technique that is capable of measuring the 3D sidewall. The line pattern has vertical stripes on the sidewall due to its fabrication process. Measured line edge profiles were analyzed using power spectral density, height-height correlation function, and autocorrelation function.
Results: Line edge profiles measured by SEM and AFM were well matched except for noise level. Frequency and scaling analyses showed that SEM profile contained high noise and had lost a property of self-affine fractals in contrast to AFM.
Conclusions: In the case of the line pattern with vertical stripes on the sidewall, SEM profile is generally consistent with 3D sidewall shape. The AFM-based LER measurement technique is useful as LER reference metrology to evaluate other LER measurement techniques.
KEYWORDS: Line edge roughness, Metrology, Atomic force microscopy, Clouds, Scanning electron microscopy, Atomic force microscope, Servomechanisms, 3D metrology, Transmission electron microscopy, Semiconductors
Line edge roughness (LER) measurement is one of the metrology challenges for three-dimensional device structures, and LER reference metrology is important for reliable LER measurements. For the purpose of LER reference metrology, we developed an LER measurement technique that can analyze LER distribution along the height of a line pattern, with high resolution and repeatability. A high-resolution atomic force microscopy (AFM) image of a vertical sidewall of a line pattern was obtained using a metrological tilting-AFM, which offers SI-traceable dimensional measurements. The tilting-tip was controlled with an inclined servo axis, and it scans the vertical sidewall along a line pattern with a high sampling density to enable an analysis of the LER height distribution at the sidewall. A horizontal cross-section of the sidewall shows sidewall roughness with sub-nm resolution. Power spectral density (PSD) analysis of the sidewall profile showed that the PSD noise in the high-frequency region was several orders of magnitude lower than the noise of typical scanning electron microscopy methods. AFM measurements were sequentially repeated three times to evaluate the repeatability of the LER measurement; results indicated a high repeatability of 0.07 nm evaluated as a standard deviation of LER at each height.
KEYWORDS: Scanning electron microscopy, Line edge roughness, 3D metrology, Metrology, Spatial resolution, Edge roughness, Atomic force microscopy, 3D image processing, Error analysis, Lithography
Line edge roughness (LER) measurement of a nanoscale line pattern is a metrology challenge in the inspection of semiconductor devices. Conventional scanning electron microscopy (SEM), a classical LER measurement technique, is a top-view (2D) metrology and incapable of accurately measuring 3D structures. For LER measurements, SEM measurement generates a single line edge profile for the 3D sidewall roughness, although the line edge profile differs at each height in the 3D sidewall. In this study, we used atomic force microscopy (AFM) with the tip-tilting technique to measure the 3D sidewall roughness, as an LER reference metrology. An identical location of a line pattern measured by SEM and AFM was compared to evaluate the SEM’s performance. The line edge profile from the AFM measurement exhibited lower noise than that from SEM. The measured line edge profiles were analyzed using the power spectral density (PSD), height-height correlation function (HHCF), and autocorrelation function. The results demonstrate that the standard deviation (σ) and correlation length (ξ) are overestimated while the roughness exponent (α) is underestimated by SEM, considering the AFM results as reference values.
Line edge roughness (LER) measurement is one of the metrology challenges for 3D device structures, and LER reference metrology is important for reliable LER measurements. We developed an LER measurement technique, which is able to analyze LER distribution along height of a line pattern, with high accuracy, resolution, and reproducibility. Highly accurate atomic force microscopy (AFM) image of a vertical sidewall of a line pattern was obtained using a metrological tilting- AFM, which offers SI-traceable dimensional measurements. The tilting-tip was controlled with an inclined servo axis and scans the vertical sidewall along a line pattern with a high sampling density to enable an analysis of the LER height distribution at the sidewall. A horizontal cross-section of the sidewall shows sidewall roughness with sub-nm resolution. Power spectral density (PSD) analysis of the sidewall profile showed that the PSD noise in the high-frequency region was several orders of magnitude lower than the noise of typical scanning electron microscopy methods. AFM measurements were sequentially repeated three times to evaluate the reproducibility of the sidewall measurement and LER analysis; results indicated a high reproducibility of 0.07 nm evaluated as a standard deviation of LER at each height.
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