Noise effects on contact edge roughness and CD uniformity measurement

Constantoudis, V; Murugesan Kuppuswamy, VK; Gogolides, E

dc.contributor.author	Constantoudis, V	en
dc.contributor.author	Murugesan Kuppuswamy, VK	en
dc.contributor.author	Gogolides, E	en
dc.date.accessioned	2014-03-01T02:53:57Z
dc.date.available	2014-03-01T02:53:57Z
dc.date.issued	2012	en
dc.identifier.issn	0277786X	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://dspace.lib.ntua.gr/xmlui/handle/123456789/36500
dc.subject	Contact edge roughness (CER)	en
dc.subject	Contact hole roughness	en
dc.subject	Correlation length	en
dc.subject	Critical Dimension (CD)	en
dc.subject	Critical Dimension Uniformity (CDU)	en
dc.subject	Metrology	en
dc.subject	Noise	en
dc.subject	Scanning electron microscopy	en
dc.subject	Synthesized images	en
dc.subject.other	Contact edge roughness	en
dc.subject.other	Contact holes	en
dc.subject.other	Correlation lengths	en
dc.subject.other	Critical dimension	en
dc.subject.other	Critical dimension uniformities	en
dc.subject.other	Noise	en
dc.subject.other	Synthesized images	en
dc.subject.other	Electron beams	en
dc.subject.other	Measurements	en
dc.subject.other	Process control	en
dc.subject.other	Scanning electron microscopy	en
dc.subject.other	Shot noise	en
dc.subject.other	Units of measurement	en
dc.subject.other	Soil structure interactions	en
dc.title	Noise effects on contact edge roughness and CD uniformity measurement	en
heal.type	conferenceItem	en
heal.identifier.primary	10.1117/12.918014	en
heal.identifier.secondary	83240K	en
heal.identifier.secondary	http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.918014	en
heal.publicationDate	2012	en
heal.abstract	The aim of this work is to study the effects of noise on the parameters characterizing the size and roughness of contact edges when they are measured by the analysis of top-down SEM images. The applied methodology is based on the modelling of rough contact edges with controlled roughness parameters and the generation of synthesized top down SEM images with several contact edges and a distribution of Critical Dimension (CD) values (CD nonuniformity). The sources of noise can be the shot noise of SEM electron beam (Poisson-type) and the microscope electronics (Gaussian-type). First, we check out the validity of the model and then we apply it to evaluate the effects of noise in synthesized SEM images with smooth and images with rough contact edges. The results show that in all cases, noise lowers CD and correlation length while it increases the rms value. CD variation is increased with noise in images with smooth and identical contacts whereas it remains almost unaltered in images including rough contacts with CD nonuniformity. Furthermore, we find that the application of a noise smoothing filter before image analysis is able to rectify the values of CD (at small filter parameter) and of rms and correlation length (at larger filter parameters), whereas it leads to larger deviations from the true values of CD variation. Quantitative assessment of the model predictions reveals that the noise induced variations of CD and CER values are inferior to those caused by process stochasticity and material inhomogeneities. © 2012 SPIE.	en
heal.journalName	Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering	en
dc.identifier.doi	10.1117/12.918014	en
dc.identifier.volume	8324	en