The goal of this work is to describe a simulatively designed scatterometry approach for the in-line characterization of sub-wavelength sinusoidal gratings, which are formed on a transparent foil in a roll-to-roll procedure. The challenge is to acquire the 3D information of the workpiece, i.e., to measure the grating height in addition to the grating period with nm precision. The grating period is obtained straightforward from the position of the first order diffraction maxima in the reflection and the transmission region. For determining the grating height, the inverse problem is solved, i.e., the relation between the scattered intensities of the diffraction maxima and the grating height is extracted from light scattering simulations. The measurement uncertainty is evaluated for different instrumentation and simulation parameters, such as the detection and incidence angle, the laser wavelength as well as the input parameters of the simulation. As a result, the measurement uncertainty for the grating period and the height is estimated to 0.3 nm and ≤8 nm, respectively, when using laser light in the visible wavelength range. Large area scanning measurements performed offline using the setup parameters derived from simulations verify the sensitivity of the presented measurement approach for identifying local variations of the spatial surface properties. Depending on the chosen detection system, sampling rates up to the MHz range are feasible meeting the requirements of in-line process control of the roll-to-roll production procedure.

Date Published: 26 June 2017
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 10330, Modeling Aspects in Optical Metrology VI, 103300K (26 June 2017); doi: 10.1117/12.2270333

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10330:
Modeling Aspects in Optical Metrology VI
Bernd Bodermann; Karsten Frenner; Richard M. Silver, Editor(s)