Patent Document ID: 9875946
Application ID: 14252323
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method comprising: providing illumination light to a plurality of measurement sites on a surface of a semiconductor wafer with known variations of at least one process parameter, structure parameter, or both, wherein at least one of the first plurality of sites includes a device structure; detecting an amount of light from each of the plurality of measurement sites in response to the illumination light; generating a measured response associated with each of the plurality of measurement sites based on the detected amounts of light, the measured response associated with each of the plurality of measurement sites comprising a first amount of measurement data; determining an expected response model of each of the at least one known process parameters, structure parameters, or both, each expected response model defining values of the parameter as a function of location on the surface of the semiconductor wafer; determining an input-output measurement model based at least in part on the first amount of measurement data; and training the input-output measurement model based on parameter values determined from the expected response model; receiving a second amount of measurement data associated with measurements of a location on a surface of the semiconductor wafer or another semiconductor wafer; extracting one or more features from the second amount of measurement data; determining proximity to a desired measurement target on the surface of the measured semiconductor wafer based at least in part on a comparison of the one or more features with ideal features associated with the desired measurement target; adjusting the measurement location based on the proximity to the desired measurement target; receiving a third amount of measurement data associated with measurements of a second plurality of sites on the surface of the measured semiconductor wafer, wherein at least one of the second plurality of sites includes the device structure; determining at least one process parameter value, at least one structural parameter value, or both, associated with each of the second plurality of sites based on a fitting of the third amount of measurement data to the trained input-output measurement model; and storing any of the at least one process parameter value, the at least one structural parameter value, or both, in a memory.