Hitachi, Ltd.

Shuji Sugiyama

Hiroyuki Suzuki

Hiroyuki Shinada

Yasutsugu Usami

Atsuko Takafuji

Yoshimitsu Saze

Yasuhiro Yoshitake

Yoshitada Oshida

Shinji Kuniyoshi

Soichi Katagiri

Norikazu Hashimoto

Akihiro Takanashi

Hisashi Maejima

Katsunori Onuki

Shuji Syohda

Heights of a sample are calibrated by setting a calibrating substrate on a stage and then irradiating a charged particle beam onto standard marks provided on at least two kinds of surfaces having different substrate heights. Secondary charged particles produced from said irradiated standard marks on the substrate are and detected and a surface height of the irradiated portion of the substrate measured. The difference in height between the standard marks is set to be in a range containing an extent, over the entire sample, to which the height of the sample varies due to warping.

WORKPIECE HOLDER, SEMICONDUCTOR FABRICATING APPARATUS, SEMICONDUCTOR INSPECTING APPARATUS, CIRCUIT PATTERN INSPECTING APPARATUS, CHARGED PARTICLE BEAM APPLICATION APPARATUS, CALIBRATING SUBSTRATE, WORKPIECE HOLDING METHOD, CIRCUIT PATTERN INSPECTING METHOD, AND CHARGED PARTICLE BEAM APPLICATION METHOD

The present invention is intended to highly fast, stably acquire highly accurate images from irradiated positions with an electron beam on a circuit pattern in the step of fabricating a semiconductor device including an insulating material or a mixture of an insulating material and a conductive material, without occurrence of any deviation in the irradiated position in the images to be comparatively inspected, automatically comparing the images with each other thereby inspecting defects of the circuit pattern without occurrence of errors, and feeding back the result to the conditions of fabricating the semiconductor device thereby increasing the reliability of the semiconductor device and reducing the defective percentage thereof. The dependence of the surface height of a workpiece on the corrected amount of deflection at a central portion of a workpiece stage is compared with that at the outer peripheral portion of the workpiece, to obtain a distortion amount inherent to the outer peripheral portion of the workpiece. The distortion amount is eliminated from an outer peripheral standard mark signal, to calculate the dependence of the height on the corrected amount of deflection at the outer peripheral portion, thereby obtaining the deflection correcting amount at the outer peripheral portion equivalent to that obtained at the central portion. Since a suitable deflection correcting table can be prepared only by using the outer peripheral standard mark, the deflection correcting table can be updated by repeating desired times calculation of the corrected amount of deflection at the outer peripheral portion while a wafer is left mounted. As a result, the deflection correcting table including the dependence of the surface height, which table is capable of keeping up with the drift of the electron beam or the like, can be accurately obtained without reducing the throughput.

A diffraction grating shaped reference pattern having the same grating pitch as diffraction grating shaped alignment pattern formed on a wafer is irradiated by alignment light, and the diffracted light signal obtained from the reference pattern is stored in a memory. The diffraction grating shaped alignment pattern formed on the wafer is irradiated by the alignment light, and the diffracted light signal from the alignment pattern is corrected based on the diffracted light signal stored in the memory.

Reduction exposure apparatus with correction for alignment light having

The present invention resides in method and apparatus for measuring a minute displacement, comprising applying a light of a first wavelength at a predetermined angle to a diffraction grating formed on an object whose position is to be detected, subjecting each of the resulting diffracted light and regular reflected light and a light of a second wavelength different from the first wavelength to heterodyne interference with each other to generate a measurement signal and a reference signal, and measuring a phase difference between the measurement signal and the reference signal to thereby determine a minute displacement of the object.

Method and apparatus for measuring minute displacement by subject light

A projection aligner having a projection optics which project circuit patterns of reticles on a wafer next by step, comprising an X-Y stage mounting the wafer and moved to an X or Y direction by a stage controller, a developer for developing an alignment mark projected on the wafer by the projection optics, an alignment mark detector being disposed on the projection optics, and a correcting arrangement for an offset error of the alignment mark detector by measuring the offset error of a zero point after the wafer is projected with an alignment mark by the projection optics, the alignment mark is developed by the developer and the developed alignment mark on the wafer is moved to is detection area which is previously set based on design data keeping the wafer fixed on the X-Y stage. The offset error is measured as moving distance of X-Y stage and adjust the stage controller or zero point of the alignment mark detector in order to project actual circuit patterns on the wafer correctly.

Projection aligner for fabricating semiconductor device having

Optical exposer

Optical exposure apparatus

A pattern exposing apparatus comprising means for projecting a semiconductor device mask pattern onto the photoresist layer coated on a semiconductor substrate, and means for projecting an identification mark which is specific to each substrate onto a part of the photoresist layer.

Growing community of inventors

Mito, Japan

Shuji Sugiyama