Accelerating On-Device Overlay Metrology Accuracy Verification

Node to node design rule are shrinking to enable better performance envelope in storage, computing power and electrical usage. A major part of every technology development is verification of the actual device overlay for thick stacks. Today the IC manufactures utilize TEM, Fib and other methods to understand the impact of overlay for thick stacks. These methods, which are considered as a "ground truth" of the fab, can give very good resolution of the features shape characteristics, material contrast, metrology and defectivity. That said, some are destructive and have long time to results. Another approach for thick stack is to use eBeam high electron landing energy (LE) with elluminator technology, this enables fast see through measurements of overlay, yet this approach has also limitation where layer stack thickness exceeds see through imaging capability while chipmakers still require seeing the bottom layer to measure the overlay.In this paper, we propose a flow of accurate in-line runtime delayer method flowed by an eBeam elluminator technology for overlay verification as an extension of current eBeam measurement capabilities. This flow can be complimentary for different applications space where there's imaging limitation of the eBeam. The excellent local delayer control enables shorter time to root cause, process and design verification metrology (as a "golden ruler") in runtime fab.The work is based on IMEC frontend wafer at source drain Implant process steps after Hard Mask Etch. Looking at device features we explore the accuracy of new flow in sampling fins, dummy gate and Hard mask openings for implant process steps. Reference eBeam metrology will verify the accuracy of the delayer metrology.