Experimental local CD uniformity (LCDU) of the dense contact-hole (CH) array pattern is statistically decomposed into stochastic noise, mask component, and metrology factor. Each component are compared quantitatively, and traced after etching to find how much improvement can be achieved by smoothing. Etch CDU gain factor is defined as the differential of etch CD by resist CD, and used to estimate etch CDU on resist CDU. Stochastic noise has influenced on not only LCDU but also local placement error (LPE) of each contact-hole. This LPE is also decomposed into its constituents in the same statistical way. As a result, stochastic noise is found to be the most dominant factor on LCDU and LPE. Etch LCDU is well expected by Etch Gain factor, but LPE seems to be kept same after etching. Fingerprints are derived from the repeating component and the boundary size for excluding proximity effect in analysis is investigated.

Date Published: 17 April 2014
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 9048, Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Lithography V, 90480A (17 April 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2048282

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9048:
Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Lithography V
Obert R. Wood II; Eric M. Panning, Editor(s)