Nederlandse Organisatie Voor Toegepast-natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek Tno

Violeta Navarro Paredes

Hamed Sadeghian Marnani

Maarten Hubertus Van Es

Abbas Mohtashami

This document is directed at a method of manufacturing a semiconductor element, the method comprising manipulating a surface of a substrate using an atomic force microscope, the atomic force microscope including a probe, the probe including a cantilever and a probe tip, the substrate including at least one or more device features embedded underneath the surface. The method comprises: imaging the embedded device features, and identifying that a position of the probe tip of the atomic force microscope is aligned with the feature; and displacing the probe tip transverse to the surface for exerting a stress for performing the step of surface manipulation, as for example contact holes. Imaging is performed by applying and obtaining an acoustic signal to and from the substrate via the probe tip, including a first and a second signal component at different frequencies. The imaging and surface manipulation are performed using said same probe and probe tip.

Method, atomic force microscopy system and computer program product

The present document relates to a method of determining an overlay or alignment error between a first and a second device layer of a multilayer semiconductor device () using an atomic force microscopy system (). The system comprises a scan head () including a probe (). The probe includes a cantilever and a probe tip (). The method comprises moving the probe tip and the semiconductor device relative to each other for scanning of the surface of the semiconductor device with the probe tip, wherein the probe tip is intermittently or continuously in contact with the surface during scanning. During scanning a signal application actuator () applies an acoustic input signal to the substrate, and motion of the probe tip is monitored with a tip position detector for obtaining an output signal, to be analyzed for mapping subsurface structures in different device layers. The signal application actuator includes a shear wave actuator to apply a shear acoustic wave () in the substrate. The output signal () is indicative of torsional deflection of the probe tip. The document further describes a system.

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's-Gravenhage, Netherlands

Violeta Navarro Paredes