Actinic metrology platform for defect review and mask qualification: flexibility and performance

Abstract

The strong effort to push further Moore’s law is driving the insertion of EUV pilot production at several captive and merchant semiconductor vendors, which already today puts strong demands on actinic tools metrology capabilities. The EUV mask infrastructure plays a central role for the successful introduction of EUV into high volume manufacturing: to provide the mask shop with actinic review capabilities, ZEISS and the SUNY Poly SEMATECH EUVL Mask Infrastructure consortium developed and launched an actinic metrology platform based on aerial imaging technology. Over the last few years, it was demonstrated how this aerial image metrology platform fulfills the mask shop requirements for actinic defect review and repair verification. In this paper we present the latest performance achievements of the platform together with the discussion on platform based capabilities for possible future actinic metrology extensions, with a special emphasis on the AIMSTM EUV solution for high-NA emulation capabilities.