Patent ID: 7187993

Claim:
A method of identifying failures in a metrology tool used to measure desired dimensions in microelectronic features comprising: providing a metrology tool running a plurality of recipes for measuring desired dimensions in microelectronic features, each recipe comprising a set of instructions for measuring at least one dimension in a microelectronic feature; providing an error log for the metrology tool, the error log having stored thereon failures in measurement of microelectronic feature dimensions; identifying one or more recipes having errors in the error log; identifying, in a list of jobs to be performed by the metrology tool, the one or more identified recipes having the errors; from the identified one or more recipes having the errors, determining a cause of the errors in the one or more recipes; effecting a change in the one or more identified recipes having the errors to correct the errors therein; and tracking a metrology tool job having the one or more recipes in which a change has been effected to determine whether the cause of errors has been corrected.