Applied Materials Israel Limited

Shalom Elkayam

Shaul Cohen

Tal Ben-Shlomo

Elad Ben Baruch

Matan Steiman

Noam Zac

Dror Alumot

There is provided a system and method of runtime examination of a semiconductor specimen. The method includes obtaining a runtime image representative of an inspection area of the specimen, the runtime image having a relatively low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR); and processing the runtime image using a machine learning (ML) model to obtain examination data specific for a given examination application, wherein the ML model is previously trained for the given examination application using one or more training samples, each training sample representative of a respective reference area sharing the same design pattern as the inspection area and comprising: a first training image of the respective reference area having a relatively low SNR; and label data indicative of ground truth in the respective reference area pertaining to the given examination application, the label data obtained by annotating a second training image of the respective reference area having a relatively high SNR.

Machine learning based examination of a semiconductor specimen and training thereof

Provided is a system and method of generating training data for training a Deep Neural Network usable for examination of a semiconductor specimen. The method includes: obtaining a first training image and first labels respectively associated with a group of pixels selected in each segment, extract a set of features characterizing the first training image, train a machine learning (ML) model using the first labels, values of the group of pixels, and the feature values of each of the set of features corresponding to the group of pixels, process the first training image using the trained ML model to obtain a first segmentation map, and determine to include the first training image and the first segmentation map into the DNN training data upon a criterion being met, and to repeat the extracting of the second features, the training and the processing upon the criterion not being met.

Generating training data usable for examination of a semiconductor specimen

There are provided systems and methods of obtaining a segmented image of a semiconductor specimen, the image comprising first structural elements, obtaining a reference image of the semiconductor specimen, the reference image being based on design data and comprising second structural elements, determining, for at least one pair of elements including a first structural element and a corresponding second structural element, data Dinformative of a spatial transformation required in order to match the elements of the pair in accordance with a matching criterion, and determining at least one of data informative of a defect in the first structural element and data informative of edge roughness of the first structural element using at least D.

Determination of defects and/or edge roughness in a specimen based on a reference image

There is provided a system and method of segmenting an image of a fabricated semiconductor specimen. The method includes: obtaining a first probability map corresponding to the image representative of at least a portion of the fabricated semiconductor specimen and indicative of predicted probabilities of pixels in the image to correspond to one or more first structural elements presented in the image, obtaining a first label map informative of one or more segments representative of second structural elements and labels associated with the segments, performing simulation on the first label map to obtain a second probability map indicative of simulated probabilities of pixels in the first label map to correspond to the one or more segments, and generating a second label map based on the first probability map and the second probability map, the second label map being usable for segmentation of the image with enhanced repeatability.

Segmentation of an image of a semiconductor specimen

There is provided a system and method of generating training data for training a Deep Neural Network usable for examination of a semiconductor specimen. The method includes: obtaining a first training image and first labels respectively associated with a group of pixels selected in each segment, extract a set of features characterizing the first training image, train a machine learning (ML) model using the first labels, values of the group of pixels, and the feature values of each of the set of features corresponding to the group of pixels, process the first training image using the trained ML model to obtain a first segmentation map, and determine to include the first training image and the first segmentation map into the DNN training data upon a criterion being met, and to repeat the extracting of the second features, the training and the processing upon the criterion not being met.

There is provided a system and method of generating a training set for training a Deep Neural Network usable for examination of a specimen. The method includes: for each given training image in a group: i) generating a first batch of training patches, including cropping the given training image into a first plurality of original patches; and augmenting at least part of the first plurality of original patches in order to simulate variations caused by a physical process of the specimen; and ii) generating a second batch of training patches, including: shifting the plurality of first positions on the given training image to obtain a second plurality of original patches, and repeating the augmenting to the second plurality of original patches to generate a second plurality of augmented patches; and including at least the first second batches of training patches corresponding to each given training image in the training set.

Generating a training set usable for examination of a semiconductor specimen

There is provided a system and method of examination of a semiconductor specimen using an examination recipe. The method includes obtaining a registered image pair, for each design-based structural element associated with a given layer, calculating an edge attribute, using a trained classifier to determine a class of the design-based structural element, and generating a layer score usable to determine validity of the registered image pair. There is also provided a system and method of generating the examination recipe usable for examination of a semiconductor specimen.

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Ramla, Israel

Shalom Elkayam