Hitachi High-tech Corporation

Nobuaki Hirose

Takashi Hiroi

Takahiro Urano

Toshifumi Honda

The objective of the present invention is provide a defect inspection apparatus that increases defect position precision and can easily align a coordinate origin offset between a reviewing apparatus and the defect inspection apparatus, even when design data cannot be obtained or it is difficult to sufficiently use the design data. The defect inspection apparatus according to the present invention acquires a wafer swath image necessary for inspection, and uses the swath image to detect defects and calculate a positional deviation amount. During the calculation of the positional deviation amount, a template pattern is acquired from one arbitrary swath image via an image processing unit, and the template pattern and a plurality of swath images of the entire wafer are compared, whereby the positional deviation amount for a position corresponding to the template pattern on the wafer is calculated. For positions at which the template pattern is not present, an interpolated positional deviation amount is calculated by executing an interpolation operation by using the calculated positional deviation amount. A defect position is corrected on the basis of the positional deviation amount and the interpolated positional deviation amount, or by using a positional deviation map in which these positional deviation amounts have been mapped on the entire wafer.

Defect inspection apparatus and defect inspection program

The purpose of the present invention is to provide a defect inspection device with which it is possible to determine a defect candidate position more accurately than before, even when design data cannot be obtained or are difficult to be utilized sufficiently. The present invention solves the problem by: setting an appropriate reference die or reference chip over a wafer to be inspected; setting, with respect to each of swath channel die images obtained by dividing a reference die swath image into a plurality of portions and detecting the portions, one or more reference patterns; correcting a position error of a swath image obtained from another die to be inspected, using the reference pattern for each swath channel image; and performing defect detection using the corrected swath channel image.

Defect inspection method and defect inspection device

The purpose of this invention is to make it possible to efficiently and accurately detect a reticle defect at an earlier stage in a manufacturing process. The inspection device according to this invention uses the results of comparing die images of wafers that have had patterns transferred thereto using the same reticle after subjecting the die images to averaging processing and the results of comparing the die images without subjecting the same to averaging processing to distinguish a random defect signal caused by a huge defect, or the like, and having an extremely high brightness from a repeated defect signal, and only extracts repeated defects with higher accuracy.

Defect inspection device and defect inspection method

An inspection information generation device includes a design information acquirer configured to acquire design information of a sample to be inspected, a candidate region extractor configured to use the design information to extract multiple candidate regions, an image capturer configured to capture images of the multiple candidate regions, a similarity calculator configured to use the images of the multiple candidate regions to calculate a similarity or distance between the multiple candidate regions, and a region determiner configured to use the similarity or the distance to determine, as inspection information, at least one reference region corresponding to a region to be inspected.

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Tokyo, Japan

Nobuaki Hirose