Contacts and lines SEM image metrology with SMILE

SMILE is a free and open-source software for the analysis of SEM images of lines and spaces patterns. We developed SMILE, in particular, to provide reliable metrology for images of high-resolution photoresist patterns obtained with EUV lithography. Our motivation is also to improve the consistency of the reported performance parameters, e.g., line-width roughness (LWR) and critical dimension (CD), in the nanolithography and EUVL communities. In its original version, SMILE offered the possibility to measure the CD of the lines and their unbiased LWR. Since its release, the software user interface and core functionalities have been substantially upgraded. In particular, SMILE is now capable of reporting unbiased LWR and LER, performing primary statistical analyses of metrics evaluated over multiple images, and analyzing SEM images of contact hole or pillar arrays. In this paper, we will discuss the new functionalities of SMILE and the algorithms used to detect the contact holes and their parameters.