Applied Materials Israel Limited

Dhananjay Singh Rathore

Roman Kris

Ishai Schwarzband

Ofer Adan

Shimon Levi

Yakov Weinberg

Ran Goldman

Olga Novak

Itay Zauer

Einat Frishman

Grigory Klebanov

Sharon Duvdevani-Bar

Elad Sommer

Assaf Shamir

Jannelle Anna Geva

Daniel Alan Rogers

Ido Friedler

Avi Aviad Ben Simhon

An evaluation system that may include an imager; and a processing circuit. The imager may be configured to obtain an electron image of a hole that is formed by an etch process, the hole exposes at least one layer of a one or more sets of layers, each set of layers comprises layers that differ from each other by their electron yield and belong to an intermediate product. The processing circuit may be configured to evaluate, based on the electron image, whether the hole ended at a target layer of the intermediate product. The intermediate product is manufactured by one or more manufacturing stages of a manufacturing process of a three dimensional NAND memory unit. The hole may exhibit a high aspect ratio, and has a width of a nanometric scale.

Evaluating a hole formed in an intermediate product

A method for determining overlay between layers of a multilayer structure may include obtaining a given image representing the multilayer structure, obtaining expected images for layers of the multilayer structure, providing a combined expected image of the multilayer structure as a combination of the expected images of said layers, performing registration of the given image against the combined expected image, and providing segmentation of the given image, thereby producing a segmented image, and maps of the layers of said multilayered structure. The method may further include determining overlay between any two selected layers of the multilayer structure by processing the maps of the two selected layers together with the expected images of said two selected layers.

Technique for measuring overlay between layers of a multilayer structure

Growing community of inventors

Boise, ID, United States of America

Dhananjay Singh Rathore