Hitachi-high-technologies Corporation

Hitachi High-tech Corporation

Nippon Chemiphar Co., Ltd.

Yasunori Goto

Takuma Yamamoto

Yuji Takagi

Fumihiko Fukunaga

Wei Sun

Yasunari Sohda

Mari Nozoe

Yasutaka Toyoda

Satoru Yamaguchi

Mitsuo Masaki

Makoto Sakakibara

Kenji Tanimoto

Zhaohui Cheng

Taku Ninomiya

Kei Sakai

Yusuke Abe

Yutaka Nomura

Atsushi Tendo

Haruhiko Shinozaki

Michiko Ishida

Keiichiro Hitomi

Takahiro Nishihata

Norihisa Miyake

Shuuichirou Takahashi

A method, an apparatus, and a program for more appropriately determining a condition for appropriately recognizing a semiconductor pattern are provided. A method for determining a condition related to a captured image of a charged particle beam apparatus including: acquiring, by a processor, a plurality of captured images, each of the captured images being an image generated by irradiating a pattern formed on a wafer with a charged particle beam, and detecting electrons emitted from the pattern, each of the captured images being an image captured according to one or more imaging conditions, the method further including: acquiring teaching information for each of the captured images; acquiring, by the processor, one or more feature determination conditions; calculating, by the processor, a feature for each of the captured images based on each of the feature determination conditions, at least one of the imaging condition and the feature determination condition being plural.

Method, apparatus, and program for determining condition related to captured image of charged particle beam apparatus

From a reference waveformand a BSE signal waveformthat is extracted from a backscattered electron image and indicates a backscattered electron signal intensity from a pattern along a first direction, a difference waveform indicating a relationship between the backscattered electron signal intensity and a difference between a coordinate of the BSE signal waveform and a coordinate of the reference waveform which have the same backscattered electron signal intensity is generated, and presence or absence of a shielded regionthat is not irradiated with a primary electron beam on a side wall of the pattern is determined based on the difference waveform. The reference waveform indicates a backscattered electron signal intensity from a reference pattern along the first direction in which the side wall is formed perpendicularly to an upper surface and a bottom surface of the pattern when the reference pattern is scanned with the primary electron beam.

Pattern inspecting device

Provided is a charged particle beam device capable of focusing with high accuracy even when a charged particle beam has a large off-axis amount. The charged particle beam device generates an observation image of a sample by irradiating the sample with a charged particle beam, and includes: a deflection unit that inclines the charged particle beam; a focusing lens that focuses the charged particle beam; an adjustment unit that adjusts a lens strength of the focusing lens based on an evaluation value calculated from the observation image; a storage unit that stores a relationship between a visual field movement amount and the lens strength; and a filter setting unit that calculates the visual field movement amount based on an inclination angle of the charged particle beam and the relationship, and sets an image filter to be superimposed on the observation image based on the calculated visual field movement amount.

Charged particle beam device

An overlay measurement method using a reference image is an effective method for an overlay measurement in a product circuit. However, there is a problem that it is not possible to obtain an ideal reference image in a process of prototyping. A measurement device described in a specific embodiment of the present invention includes an imaging unit that captures an image of a circuit pattern of a semiconductor wafer surface by an optical microscope or an electronic microscope, a pattern recognition unit that extracts a first pattern and a second pattern from the image captured by the imaging unit, a reference image generation unit that synthesizes a first reference image using the first pattern extracted from a plurality of the images and synthesizes a second reference image using the second pattern extracted from the plurality of images, a quantification unit that quantifies a first difference that is a difference between the first reference image and the first pattern and a second difference that is a difference between the second reference image and the second pattern, and a calculation unit that calculates an overlay amount included in the circuit pattern using the first difference and the second difference.

Measurement device, method and display device

An electron microscope device includes: a first detection means disposed at a high elevation angle for detecting electrons having relatively low energy; a second detection means disposed at a low elevation angle for detecting electrons having relatively high energy; a means for identifying, from a first image obtained from a first detector, a hole region in a semiconductor pattern within a preset region; a means for calculating for individual holes, from a second image obtained from a second detector, indexes pertaining to an inclined orientation and an inclination angle, on the basis of the distance between the outer periphery of the hole region and the hole bottom; and a means for calculating, from the results measured for the individual holes, indexes pertaining to an inclined orientation of the hole and an inclination angle of the hole as representative values for the image being measured.

Electron microscope device and inclined hole measurement method using same

A pattern measuring device ensures highly accurately measuring a depth and a three-dimensional shape irrespective of a formation accuracy of a deep trench and/or a deep hole. Therefore, in the present invention, the measuring system detects backscattered electrons from a pattern caused by an irradiation, compares backscattered electron signal intensities from a top surface, a bottom surface, and a sidewall of the pattern, and calculates a three-dimensional shape (or height information) of the sidewall based on a difference in heights of the top surface and the lower surface. The measuring system compares the calculated three-dimensional shape of the sidewall with a three-dimensional shape of the sidewall estimated based on an intensity distribution (open angle) of a primary electron beam, corrects the estimated three-dimensional shape of the sidewall based on a difference in the comparison, and corrects until the difference in the comparison becomes an acceptable value.

System and method for measuring patterns

To address the problem in which when measuring the overlay of patterns formed on upper and lower layers of a semiconductor pattern by comparing a reference image and measurement image obtained through imaging by an SEM, the contrast of the SEM image of the pattern of the lower layer is low relative to that of the SEM image of the pattern of the upper layer and alignment state verification is difficult even if the reference image and measurement image are superposed on the basis of measurement results, the present invention determines the amount of positional displacement of patterns of an object of overlay measurement from a reference image and measurement image obtained through imaging by an SEM, carries out differential processing on the reference image and measurement image, aligns the reference image and measurement image that have been subjected to differential processing on the basis of the positional displacement amount determined previously, expresses the gradation values of the aligned differential reference image and differential measurement image as brightnesses of colors that differ for each image, superposes the images, and displays the superposed images along with the determined positional displacement amount.

Overlay measurement method, device, and display device

Provided is a sample observation apparatus including a charged particle optical column that irradiates a sample including an observation target portion that is a concave portion with a charged particle beam at an acceleration voltage, an image generation section that acquires an image including the observation target portion from a signal acquired with irradiation of the charged particle beam, a storage section that stores information representing a relationship between a brightness ratio of a concave portion and its neighboring portion of a reference sample that is irradiated with the charged particle beam at the acceleration voltage and a value that represents a structure of the concave portions of the reference sample in advance, a calculation section that acquires a brightness ratio of the concave portion and its neighboring portion of the image, and a determination section that determines whether or not a defect occurs in the observation target portion based on the information that represents the relationship and the brightness ratio of the image.

Sample observation device

When a scanning electron microscope is used to measure a superposition error between upper-layer and lower-layer patterns, an SN of the lower-layer pattern may often be lower, so that when simple frame adding processing is used, the adding processing needs to be performed many times. Further, in an image obtained through such simple adding processing, contrast may not be optimal for both the upper-layer and lower-layer patterns. In a superposition measuring apparatus and superposition measuring method that measure a difference between a position of an upper-layer pattern and a position of a lower-layer pattern by using an image obtained by irradiation of a charged particle ray, portions of images having contrasts optimized for the respective upper-layer and lower-layer patterns are added to generate a first added image optimized for the upper-layer pattern and a second added image optimized for the lower-layer pattern, and the difference between the position of the upper-layer pattern identified by using the first added image and position of the lower-layer pattern identified by using the second added image is calculated.

Superposition measuring apparatus, superposition measuring method, and superposition measuring system

When the electrode potential of a charge control electrode above a wafer is reduced, image brightness is reduced. A point of change in the image brightness is a switching point between a positively charged state of the image and a negatively charged state of the image, showing the weakly charged state of the image. By setting this point of change as an inspecting condition, the amount of electric charges on the surface of the wafer can be reduced, and stable wafer inspection can be performed. It is estimated that an applied voltage Vin FIG.corresponds to the point of the change and is roughly included in the voltage range of a region enclosed by a broken line in the vicinity of the applied voltage V. Within this voltage range, the influence of charge on an inspection under the inspecting condition can be reduced.

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Tokyo, Japan

Yasunori Goto