Applied Materials Israel Limited

Lior Katz

Elad Cohen

Eyal Neistein

Yuri Feigin

Boaz Dudovich

Amir Bar

Chen Itzikowitz

Eyal Rot

Eli Oren Joni

Shiran Ben Israel

Assaf Ariel

Lior Yehieli

There is provided a system and method of defect detection of a semiconductor specimen. The method includes obtaining a first image of the specimen acquired at a first bit depth, converting by a first processor the first image to a second image with a second bit depth lower than the first bit depth, transmitting the second image to a second processor configured to perform first defect detection on the second image using a first defect detection algorithm to obtain a first set of defect candidates, and sending locations of the first set of defect candidates to the first processor, extracting, from the first image, a set of image patches corresponding to the first set of defect candidates based on the locations, and performing second defect detection on the set of image patches using a second defect detection algorithm to obtain a second set of defect candidates.

Defect detection of a semiconductor specimen

A system and method for specimen examination, the system comprising a processing and memory circuitry (PMC) for: obtaining an image of at least a part of a specimen, the image acquired by an examination tool; receiving one or more characteristics of a defect of interest and a location of interest associated therewith; modifying within the image one or more pixels corresponding to the location of interest, wherein the modification is provided in accordance with a characteristic of the defect of interest, thereby planting the defect of interest into the image; processing the modified image to detect locations of potential defects of the specimen in accordance with a detection recipe; and determining whether the detected locations include the location of interest. Subject to the location of interest not being detected, modifying the detection recipe to enable detecting the planted defect of interest at the location of interest.

Detecting defects in a semiconductor specimen

A method and system for detecting defects in a specimen, the method comprising: obtaining an image comprising a plurality of pixels of a specimen part; processing the image according to a detection recipe to derive information related to potential defects in the specimen, the information comprising a first data set informative of first locations identified, in accordance with the detection recipe as locations of potential defects, and a second data set informative of second locations not identified as locations of potential defects; receiving data specifying targeted locations of interest within the part of the specimen; when the first data set is not informative of each targeted location, generating a third data set by adding to the first data set information related to the missing targeted location from the second data set, the information bearing an indication that it corresponds to a targeted location; and outputting the third data set.

Detecting targeted locations in a semiconductor specimen

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Jerusalem, Israel

Lior Katz