Hybrid Metrology Applied to dimensional Control in Lithography

The industry of semiconductors continues to evolve at a fast pace, proposing a new technology node around every two years. Each new technology node presents reduced feature sizes and stricter dimension control. As the features of devices continue to shrink, allowed tolerances for metrology errors must shrink as well, pushing the evolution of the metrology tools.No individual metrology technique alone can answer the tight requirements of the industry today, not to mention in the next technology generations. Besides the limitations of the metrology methods, other constraints such as the amount of metrology data available for higher order analysis and the time required for generating such data are also relevant and impact the usage of metrology in production. For the production of advanced technology nodes, neither speed nor precision may be sacrificed, which calls for cleverer metrology approaches, such as the Hybrid Metrology.Hybrid Metrology consists of employing different metrology strategies together in order to combine their strengths while mitigating their weaknesses. This hybrid approach goal is to improve the measurements in such a way that the final data presents better characteristics that each method separately. One of the techniques than can be used to combine the data coming from different metrology techniques is called Data Fusion. There are a large number of developed methods of Data Fusion, using different mathematical tools, to address the data fusion process.The first goal of this thesis project was to start developing the topics of Data Fusion and Hybrid Metrology within the two laboratories whose cooperation made this work possible: LTM (Laboratoire des Technologies de la Microelectronique) and LETI (Laboratoire d'electronique et de technologie de l'information). This thesis presents the concepts of Data Fusion in the context of Hybrid Metrology applied to dimensional measuring for the semiconductors industry. This concept can be extensively used in many other fields of applications.In this work the basics of state-of-the-art metrology techniques is presented and discussed. The focus is the CD-SEM, for its fast and almost-non-destructive metrology; the AFM, for its accurate profile view of patterns and non-destructive characteristic; the Scatterometry, for its precision, global and fast measurements; and the FIB-STEM, as a reference on accuracy for any type of profile, although destructive. The strengths and weaknesses of these methods were discussed in order to introduce the need of Hybrid Metrology and to identify the role that each of those methods can play in this context.Several experiments were performed during this thesis work in order to provide further knowledge about the characteristics and limitations of each metrology method and to be used as either inputs or reference on the different Hybrid Metrology scenarios proposed.The selected method for fuse the data coming from different metrology methods was the Bayesian approach. This technique was evaluated in different experimental contexts, both for Height and CD metrology combining different metrology methods. Results were evaluated for both the debiasing step alone and for the complete fusion flow. In both cases, it was clear the advantages of using a Hybrid Metrology approach for improving the measurement precision and accuracy.The presented Hybrid Metrology technique may be used by the semiconductor industry in different steps of the fabrication process. This technique can also provide information for machine calibration, such as a CD-SEM tool being calibrated based on Hybrid Metrology results generated using the CD-SEM itself together with Scatterometry data.