Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Comp. Ltd.

Kuang-Shing Chen

Pei-Hsuan Lee

Xiaomeng Chen

Shih-Chang Wang

Yung-Cheng Lin

Pei-Chao Su

Chien-Huei Chen

Hung-Yi Chung

Wei-Chen Wu

Chan-Ming Chang

Shih-Yung Chen

Chien-Hsiang Huang

Li-Jou Lee

Kuan-Hsin Chen

Chun-Chieh Chin

Chien-An Lin

Yu-Hsiang Cheng

Hung-Ming Chen

A hot spot defect detecting method and a hot spot defect detecting system are provided. In the method, hot spots are extracted from a design of a semiconductor product to define a hot spot map comprising hot spot groups, wherein local patterns in a same context of the design yielding a same image content are defined as a same hot spot group. During runtime, defect images obtained by an inspection tool performing hot scans on a wafer manufactured with the design are acquired and the hot spot map is aligned to each defect image to locate the hot spot groups. The hot spot defects in each defect image are detected by dynamically mapping the hot spot groups located in each defect image to a plurality of threshold regions and respectively performing automatic thresholding on pixel values of the hot spots of each hot spot group in the corresponding threshold region.

Hot spot defect detecting method and hot spot defect detecting system

The present disclosure provides a method and a system for scanning wafer. The system captures a defect image of a wafer, and generates a reference image corresponding to the first defect image based on a reference image generation model. The system generates a defect marked image based on the defect image and the reference image.

Method and system for scanning wafer

A high atomic number material is applied to one or more surfaces of a semiconductor structure of a wafer. The one or more surfaces are at a depth different from a depth of a surface of the wafer. An electron beam is scanned over the semiconductor structure to cause a backscattered electron signal to be collected at a collector. A profile scan of the semiconductor structure is generated based on an intensity of the backscattered electron signal, at the collector, resulting from the high atomic number material. The high atomic number material increases the intensity of the backscattered electron signal for the one or more surfaces of the semiconductor structure such that contrast in the profile scan is increased. The increased contrast of the profile scan enables accurate critical dimension measurements of the semiconductor structure.

Semiconductor structure inspection using a high atomic number material

Growing community of inventors

Hsinchu, Taiwan

Kuang-Shing Chen