The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 15, 2019
Filed:
Dec. 15, 2017
Kla-tencor Corporation, Milpitas, CA (US);
Onur Nihat Demirer, Austin, TX (US);
William Pierson, Austin, TX (US);
Mark D. Smith, San Jose, CA (US);
Jeremy S. Nabeth, Austin, TX (US);
Miguel Garcia-Medina, Round Rock, TX (US);
Lipkong Yap, Saratoga Springs, NY (US);
KLA-Tencor Corporation, Milpitas, CA (US);
Abstract
A process control system includes a controller configured to generate a reference overlay signature based on one or more overlay reference layers of a sample, extrapolate the reference overlay signature to a set of correctable fields for the exposure of a current layer of the sample to generate a full-field reference overlay signature, identify one or more alignment fields of the set of correctable fields, generate an alignment-correctable signature by modeling alignment corrections for the set of correctable fields, subtract the alignment-correctable signature from the full-field reference overlay signature to generate feedforward overlay corrections for the current layer when the one or more overlay reference layers are the same as the one or more alignment reference layers, generate lithography tool corrections based on the feedforward overlay corrections, and provide the lithography tool corrections for the current layer to the lithography tool.