Fujitsu Corporation

Fujitsu Semiconductor Limited

Tsutomu Horie

Kazutoshi Ohta

Mitsufumi Naoe

An inspection apparatus of a mask for exposure that has a light shielding regionand a half-tone regionon a transparent substrate, includes a storage unit stored with half-tone pattern area data specifying an existing area of the half-tone region, a pattern detection unitacquiring a binary image of an area in which to scan over the surface of the transparent substrate by a relative movement with respect to the transparent substrate, and a control unitmaking effective a detecting operation of the pattern detection unit in the area on the transparent substrate that is specified by the half-tone pattern area data, and making ineffective the detecting operation of the pattern detection unit outside the specified area.

Inspection apparatus, inspection method and manufacturing method of mask for exposure, and mask for exposure

A method by which necessity of correction of any defect detected in inspection of a product reticle can exactly be judged is proposed, in which device patterns are formed in an exposure area on a product reticle, programmed defects of which transferability being preliminarily evaluated are formed in an evaluation pattern area different from the exposure area, where any defect detected in product reticle inspection is evaluated for its transferability by comparing the detected defect and the preliminarily-evaluated programmed defect based on observation of these defects at the same inspection wavelength, so as to enable an exact judgment on whether the detected defect is affective to transfer of the device pattern or not.

Reticle, reticle inspection method and reticle inspection apparatus

An inspection device for photomasks and products fabricated using the same, capable of reducing the time from inspection to repair. A reference data generator generates reference data that is based on design data and includes sensitivity class codes that differentiate designated pattern functions such as signal lines and power supply lines by means of inspection sensitivity. Then an inspection sensitivity setter allocates the desired inspection sensitivity for each sensitivity class code. An image acquiring unit photographs a subject of inspection (e.g., photomask or wafer), and a comparator detects a defect by comparing the photographed image with the reference data. When a defect is found, a reference data extractor extracts the region of the reference data that corresponds to the defect location. A defect registration determinator refers to the sensitivity class codes for the region and determines whether to register the defect. This reduces the number of defects that are registered.

Device and method for inspecting photomasks and products fabricated using the same

A positional accuracy measurement pattern is formed such that the position of an edge portion required to have high positional accuracy in a device pattern and the position of the pattern center of the positional accuracy measurement pattern are arranged on the same straight line in accordance with a direction in which the high positional accuracy is necessary. On the basis of the pattern center of the positional accuracy measurement pattern and the difference between the measurement value and the design value of the pattern dimension, the positional accuracy (the difference between the measurement value and the design value) of an edge portion of the device pattern is calculated.

Reticle, and pattern positional accuracy measurement device and method

Pattern data of a designed circuit, including a plurality of feature data is verified according to given rules (S ). If feature data not meeting the rules exists, contents of the feature data are outputted as an error (S ), and if a designer considers the error is not problematic (false error) in view of characteristics of the circuit (S ), he inputs the error information indicating the error is false to add it to a file including the pattern data (S ). The file is read to perform processing on feature data to obtain exposure data for manufacturing a mask, and the feature data processed is verified according to given rules. If any feature data not meeting the rule exists, it is judged whether the contents of the feature data are included in the error information. If it is judged to be included, further judged whether the error is false. If false, the process is continued to repeat for the rest data.

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Kawasaki, Japan

Tsutomu Horie