Kla Tencor Corporation

Johan DeGreeve

Luc Vanderheydt

Pauline Begoc

Dominque Janssens

Filip Cauwenberghs

Koen Goorman

Lieve Govaerts

An illumination system, an inspection tool and a method for inspecting an object are disclosed. A configurable area light source is arranged in an illumination optical axis of an illumination beam path, wherein the configurable area light source is configured such that different beam diameters are settable. At least one illumination lens is positioned in the illumination beam path for directing a collimated beam at least onto a field of view on a surface of the object, wherein a value of an angle of incidence of the illumination optical axis of the illumination beam path equals a value of an angle of reflectance of the imaging optical axis of the imaging beam path. The invention allows the combination of the functionality of a wide angle coaxial illumination and a collimated coaxial illumination in one illumination system.

Illumination system, inspection tool with illumination system, and method of operating an illumination system

The present invention is directed to a method for detecting anomalies in a semiconductor substrate comprising the steps of providing a semiconductor substrate, making an inspection image I of the substrate, generating an image K from image I by image processing, generating image B by binarizing image K, and examining image I using image B, characterized in that generating image K comprises multiplying a high-pass convolution filtered image G(I) from image I and a first weight image W. The present invention is also directed to an apparatus suitable for applying the method.

Detecting semiconductor substrate anomalies

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Brabant, Belgium

Johan DeGreeve