Patent ID: 6724474
Filing Date: 2004-04-20
Classification: G01N,H01L

Abstract:
A wafer surface inspection method for discriminating among types of defects on a wafer according to defect measurements obtained from a wafer inspection system which includes a plurality of dark field detectors, said method comprising:determining whether a first condition is satisfied in which a size of a defect on the wafer measured by the wafer inspection system is smaller than a limit value denoting a maximum size of crystal originated particles; determining whether a second condition is satisfied in which a correlation between a plurality of defect light intensity values detected by the plurality of dark field detectors satisfies a reference value; determining whether a third condition is satisfied in which a location of the defect measured by the wafer inspection system is within a vacancy-rich area of the wafer; and determining that the type of the defect is a crystal originated particle when the first, second and third conditions are all satisfied, and determining that the type of defect is an actual particle when any one or more of the first, second and third conditions is not satisfied.