Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Comp. Ltd.

Weimin Hu

Chih-Ming Ke

Kai-Hsiung Chen

Chun-Ming Hu

Yang-Hung Chang

The present disclosure provides a system. The system includes a metrology tool configured to collect overlay errors from a patterned substrate; and a controller module coupled to the metrology tool and configured to generate an overlay compensation from the collected overlay errors, wherein the generating of the overlay compensation includes identifying a portion of the overlay errors as a set of outliers, identifying inside the set of outliers overlay errors not due to reticle effects, thereby creating a set of noise, excluding the set of noise from overlay errors, thereby creating a set of filtered overlay errors, and calculating the overlay compensation based on the set of filtered overlay errors.

Noise reduction for overlay control

The present disclosure provides a method. The method includes patterning a substrate by a patterning tool; collecting a plurality of overlay errors from a plurality of fields on the substrate; identifying noise from the plurality of overlay errors by applying a first filtering operation and a second filtering operation that is different from the first filtering operation. The method further includes grouping the plurality of overlay errors that are not identified as noise into a set of filtered overlay errors; calculating an overlay compensation based on the set of filtered overlay errors; and performing a compensation process to the patterning tool according to the overlay compensation.

Growing community of inventors

Hsinchu, Taiwan

Weimin Hu