International Business Machines Corporation

Georgios A Vakas

Eric Peter Solecky

Charles Neill Archie

Lin Zhou

Stephen W Goodrich

Erwin E Weissmann

Ejaj Ahmed

Anastasios A Katsetos

A method for measuring a dimension of a device includes receiving an image of a portion of the device, receiving a first offset value and a second offset value, processing the image to define a least one graph of a line of pixels, the at least one graph including the brightness level of each pixel in a line of pixels, identifying a location of a first peak and a second peak in the graph, defining a first exclusion area boundary, defining a second exclusion area boundary, setting the brightness level of the pixels between the first exclusion area boundary and the second exclusion area boundary to zero, identifying a first portion of the feature of interest and a second portion of the feature of interest, and measuring a distance between the first portion of the feature of interest and the second portion of the feature of interest.

Methods and systems involving measuring complex dimensions of silicon devices

A method of preparing recipes of operating a metrology tool, wherein each recipe includes a set of instructions for measuring at least one dimension in a microelectronic feature. There is provided a desired recipe having instructions for measuring one or more desired dimensions, the desired recipe or portion thereof including a summary of parameters relating to metrology tool function with respect to the microelectronic feature dimension to be measured. The method includes comparing the instructions in the desired recipe with the instructions in a database, identifying differences between the instructions in the desired recipe and the instructions in the database, modifying the instructions in the desired recipe to conform to the instructions in the database, verifying the desired recipe prior to using the modified desired recipe by the metrology tool, and using the desired recipe to execute a microelectronic feature measurement on the metrology tool.

Metrology tool recipe validator using best known methods

A method of preparing recipes for operating a metrology tool, each recipe including a set of instructions for measuring dimensions in a microelectronic feature. A database includes a plurality of known instructions with best known methods for measuring different feature dimensions by creating a summary of a recipes used by the tool, and adding categorization attributes to identify the summary for retrieval from the database. There is provided a desired recipe having instructions for measuring desired dimensions, including a summary of parameters relating to tool function for the feature dimension to be measured. The method includes comparing the instructions in the desired recipe with the instructions in the database, identifying differences therebetween, modifying the desired recipe instructions to conform to the database instructions, verifying the desired recipe prior to using the modified desired recipe by the tool, and using the desired recipe to execute a feature measurement on the tool.

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Poughkeepsie, NY, United States of America

Georgios A Vakas