Applied Materials, Inc.

Kla Tencor Corporation

Therma-wave, Inc.

Jingmin Leng

Jon Opsal

Praket Prakash Jha

Michael Wenyoung Tsiang

Man-Ping Cai

Mandar Balasaheb Pandit

Wenhui Li

Mandar B Pandit

Embodiments of the present technology may include semiconductor processing methods that include depositing a film of semiconductor material on a substrate in a substrate processing chamber. The deposited film may be sampled for defects at greater than or about two non-contiguous regions of the substrate with scanning electron microscopy. The defects that are detected and characterized may include those of a size less than or about 10 nm. The methods may further include calculating a total number of defects in the deposited film based on the sampling for defects in the greater than or about two non-contiguous regions of the substrate. At least one deposition parameter may be adjusted as a result of the calculation. The adjustment to the at least one deposition parameter may reduce the total number of defects in a deposition of the film of semiconductor material.

Systems and methods for analyzing defects in CVD films

A modeling approach is disclosed which addresses samples with different regions where the structures exhibit different periodicities. In this approach, a first partial model is generated which defines the shape, material properties and periodicity of the first region. In addition, a second partial model is generated defining the shape, material properties and periodicity of the second region. These two partial models are then merged into a combined model. When optimizing the combined model, the shape and material properties of the first and second models are independently adjusted. The optical responses of the model with differing shapes and material properties are-calculated and compared to a physical sample. This process is iteratively carried out to derive a final combined model that corresponds to a physical sample.

Scatterometry multi-structure shape definition with multi-periodicity

A method is described for analyzing and characterizing parameters of a semiconductor wafer. In particular, an approach is described for characterizing the interface layer between a thin oxide film and a silicon substrate in order to more accurately determine the characteristics of the sample. The wafer is inspected and a set of measured data is created. This measured data is compared with theoretical data generated based on a theoretical set of parameters as applied to a model representing the physical structure of the semiconductor. The model includes an interface layer, between the film layer and the silicon substrate, which includes a representation of the electronic structure of the underlying substrate. In the preferred embodiment, the representation is a five peak, critical point model influenced by the electronic transitions of the underlying silicon substrate. An error minimization algorithm, such as a least squares fitting routine, is used to modify the theoretical parameters until the differences between the measured data and the theoretically derived data is minimized.

Analysis of interface layer characteristics

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Fremont, CA, United States of America

Jingmin Leng