An official website of the United States government
Here’s how you know
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
Active Monitoring and Control of Electron-Beam-Induced Contamination
Published
Author(s)
Andras Vladar, Michael T. Postek, R Vane
Abstract
The vacuum systems of all scanning electron microscopes (SEMs), even in the so-called clean instruments, have certain hydrocarbon residues that the vacuum pumps do not effectively remove. The cleanliness of the vacuum and the amount and nature of these residual molecules depends on the type of the pumps and also on the samples moved through the system. Many times, the vacuum readings are quite good but the electron beam still leaves disturbing contamination marks on the sample. This means that in a critical dimension (CD) SEM, repeated measurements cannot be done without extra, sometimes unacceptably high measurement errors resulting from carry-over. During the time necessary for even one measurement, the sample dimension can change, and the extent of this change remains unknown unless a suitable contamination deposition measurement technique is found and regular monitoring is implemented. This paper assesses the problem of contamination of carbonatious materials in the SEM, shows a possible method for its measurement and presents a promising solution to the contamination deposition problem.
Proceedings Title
Proceedings of SPIE, Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XV, Neal T. Sullivan, Editor
Volume
4344
Conference Dates
February 26, 2001
Conference Location
Santa Clara, CA, USA
Conference Title
Poster Session
Pub Type
Conferences
Keywords
accuracy, CD, CD-SEM, contamination, linewidth, lithography, measurement, metrology, scanning electron microscope, SEM
Vladar, A.
, Postek, M.
and Vane, R.
(2001),
Active Monitoring and Control of Electron-Beam-Induced Contamination, Proceedings of SPIE, Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XV, Neal T. Sullivan, Editor, Santa Clara, CA, USA
(Accessed October 31, 2024)