Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi Tokyo Electronics Co., Ltd.

Mikihito Saito

Yuzo Taniguchi

Yoshitoshi Ito

Shigeharu Kimura

Chusuke Munakata

Hiroto Nagatomo

Kyo Suda

Kanji Kinameri

Shinobu Hase

Tooru Fukui

Yoshiichi Hori

Takahiro Kamagata

The present invention relates to a technique, in the inspection of a defect of a semiconductor memory or the like, in which chip comparison is separated from repetitive pattern comparison in a region of a wafer to be inspected whereby both the comparisons are rendered possible to perform in parallel in one and the same scanning.

Method and apparatus for the inspection of patterns

A pattern defect inspection apparatus detects presence or absence of a defect in a pattern formed on a semiconductor wafer by scanning the pattern normally to the surface thereof by a coherent light beam of a predetermined spot size, detecting reflected diffraction lights generated thereby and processing the detected lights. It comprises an abnormal direction signal detector including photo-detectors having wide light receiving areas arranged in a plurality of spatial areas which the reflected diffraction lights from a normal pattern do not normally reach, a normal pattern detector including photo-detectors having large light receiving areas arranged in a plurality of spatial areas which the reflected diffraction lights from the normal pattern reach, and a defect discriminator for determining if the abnormal direction signals are due to a true defect or not in accordance with the signals from the abnormal direction signal detector and the normal pattern detector.

Pattern defect inspection apparatus

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Mikihito Saito