A new filtering method to extract repeated defects (FIMER) [lithography]

Abstract

With the increase in importance of lithography processes in the sub-0.25 /spl mu/m era, it is becoming critical to extract repeated defects resulting from mask-related defects or from the lithography margin. In this paper, a new filtering method to extract repeated defects (FIMER) is proposed. It is shown by simulation that FIMER is superior to the conventional windowing method in extracting the repeated defects. For the simulation studies taken up in this paper, the repeated defects are extracted by FIMER with error of less than 5%.