Hitachi-High-Technologies Corporation

Yoshio Kimoto

Akira Hamamatsu

Toshifumi Honda

Takanori Kondo

Hideo Ota

In order to prevent an erroneous determination of an on-film defect, the sensitivity of the post-inspection is reduced so that a film swelling due to a minute defect would not be detected. Classification is performed to determine whether a defect is at least one of an on-film defect and a film swelling, by performing a coordinate correction on the result of a post-inspection by an actual-defect fine alignment using the result of a pre-inspection performed with two-stage thresholds, and by checking defects against each other. In addition, classification is performed to determine whether a defect is at least one of an on-film defect and a film swelling by, during the post-inspection, preparing instruction data from information of the refractive index and thickness of a film formed on a wafer and comparing the instruction data with a signal intensity ratio of a detection system.

Defect classification device, inspection device, and inspection system

Proposed is an inspection device that is provided with: an illuminating optical unit that irradiates a discretionary region of a sample with light; a control unit that gives instructions to the illuminating optical unit; and at least one detection unit that detects light transmitted from the sample. The illuminating optical unit includes a light source unit that generates light, and an electrooptic element unit to which the light generated by the light source unit is inputted, and on the basis of the instructions given from the control unit, the electrooptic element unit adjusts the light to be in a desired polarization state, said light having been generated by the light source unit, and irradiates the sample with the light.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Yoshio Kimoto