Kla Tencor Corporation

Gangadharan Sivaraman

Raghav Babulnath

Thirupurasundari Jayaraman

Satya Kurada

Srikanth Kandukuri

Lisheng Gao

Kenong Wu

Eugene Shifrin

Hong Chen

Santosh Bhattacharyya

Masatoshi Yamaoka

Prasanti Uppaluri

Vidyasagar Anantha

Raghavan Konuru

Rahul Lakhawat

Pavan Kumar

Shuo Sun

Karthikeyan Subramanian

Manikandan Mariyappan

Methods and systems for creating a sample of defects for a specimen are provided. One method includes detecting defects on a specimen based on output generated by a detector of an output acquisition subsystem. For the defects detected in an array region on the specimen, where the array region includes multiple array cell types, the method includes stacking information for the defects based on the multiple array cell types. The stacking includes overlaying design information for only a first of the multiple array cell types with the information for only the defects detected in the first of the multiple array cell types. In addition, the method includes selecting a portion of the detected defects based on results of the stacking thereby creating a sample of the detected defects.

Creating defect samples for array regions

Methods and systems for determining a position of output generated by an inspection subsystem in design data space are provided. In general, some embodiments described herein are configured for substantially accurately aligning inspection subsystem output generated for a specimen to a design for the specimen despite deformation of the design in the inspection subsystem output. In addition, some embodiments are configured for generating and/or using alignment targets that can be shared across multiple specimens of the same layer and design rule for alignment of inspection subsystem output generated for a specimen to a design for the specimen.

Sub-pixel alignment of inspection to design

Systems and methods for detecting defects on a wafer are provided. One method includes generating test image(s) for at least a portion of an array region in die(s) on a wafer from frame image(s) generated by scanning the wafer with an inspection system. The method also includes generating a reference image for cell(s) in the array region from frame images generated by the scanning of the wafer. In addition, the method includes determining difference image(s) for at least one cell in the at least the portion of the array region in the die(s) by subtracting the reference image from portion(s) of the test image(s) corresponding to the at least one cell. The method further includes detecting defects on the wafer in the at least one cell based on the difference image(s).

Repeater detection

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Chennai, India

Gangadharan Sivaraman