High-speed mapping of intertransistor overlay variations using active electrical metrology

Xu Ouyang; C. Neil Berglund; Roger Fabian W. Pease

doi:10.1117/12.436776

22 August 2001 High-speed mapping of intertransistor overlay variations using active electrical metrology

Xu Ouyang, C. Neil Berglund, Roger Fabian W. Pease

Proceedings Volume 4344, Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XV; (2001) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.436776
Event: 26th Annual International Symposium on Microlithography, 2001, Santa Clara, CA, United States

Abstract

Integrated circuits are becoming more sensitive to overlay errors between the most critical layers. This paper focuses on inter-transistor overlay variations, which are defined as the short-range variations of overlay between transistors separated by distances of 1 micrometers to 100 micrometers . Many circuits are particularly sensitive to these inter- transistor variations. However, inter-transistor variations are difficult to measure using conventional techniques of metrology. We have developed an active electrical metrology method using on-chip test circuitry to map inter-transistor overlay variations. Test chips were designed and fabricated on a commercial HP 0.35 micrometers process. An array of 127 x 64 active electrical overlay test structures was measured. The array has an area of 856.8 micrometers x 705.6 micrometers , with uniform sampling spacing of 6.8 micrometers x 11.2 micrometers . A measurement speed of 5 microsecond(s) per site was achieved with an accuracy of 6.5 nm (3-sigma). The measured overlay variations between gate poly and diffusion were found to be made up of alignment errors probably associated with the wafer stepper operation combined with short-range overlay variations probably contributed primarily by the mask. With 3-sigma values of 20-30 nm, the inter-transistor overlay variations are surprisingly large when viewed in the context of the typical overall overlay budget for a 0.35 micrometers process. Contour plots and Fourier analysis show that they have an obvious periodicity of 102.4 micrometers in y direction, which can be related to the writing stripes of the raster-scanned mask lithography system used to fabricate the masks. Intra- stripe and stripe-to-stripe overlay variations are then decomposed by spatial frequency filtering, and the intra- stripe variations are further analyzed.

Citation Download Citation

Xu Ouyang, C. Neil Berglund, and Roger Fabian W. Pease "High-speed mapping of intertransistor overlay variations using active electrical metrology", Proc. SPIE 4344, Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XV, (22 August 2001); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.436776

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