High-accuracy, high-speed, and smart metrology in the EUV era

As a follow-up to last year’s “What is prevalent CD-SEM's role in EUV era?” [1], here we report our ongoing progress on total metrology solutions for the sub-10-nm extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography process. We discuss two technical approaches that have emerged following our previous work. First, similar to conventional minimization processes, we focus on improvements in the top metrology task, down-to-ångström-order tool matching, namely, “atomic matching”, which is a crucially important feature in all in-line metrology tools in the EUV era. Second, we examine a comprehensive solution that enables EUV-characterized featured process monitoring with greater accuracy, higher speed, and smarter metrology.