PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15761664
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-03
Publication Date: 2018-12
Patent Classification: ["356", "369000"]

Abstract:
A method for measuring thickness variations in a first layer of a semiconductor structure includes: —acquiring an image of at least one zone of the surface of the structure —processing the acquired image so as to determine a map of the thickness variations of the first layer, and comparing the intensity of each pixel of the image with a predetermined calibration curve, the calibration curve being determined for a given thickness of a second layer of the, structure, and —measuring the thickness of the second layer in the at least one zone, —if the measured thickness is different from the thickness of the second layer considered in the calibration curve, and using a correction curve to determine a corrected map of thickness variations of the first layer.

Claim (Index 1):
A method for measuring thickness variations in a first layer of a multilayer semiconductor structure, comprising:\n acquiring, with an image acquisition system, an image of at least one zone of the surface of the structure, the image being obtained by reflecting a quasi-monochromatic light flux on the zone of the surface of the structure, processing the acquired image so as to determine, from intensity variations of the light reflected by the zone of the surface, a map of the thickness variations of the first layer, the treatment comprising comparing the intensity of each pixel of the image with a predetermined calibration curve defining a relationship between the intensity of a pixel of the acquired image and a local thickness of the first layer, 5-the calibration curve being determined for a given thickness of a second layer of the structure different from the first layer, wherein the wavelength of the quasi-monochromatic light flux is selected so as to correspond to a minimum of the sensitivity of the reflectivity with respect to the second layer, the sensitivity of the reflectivity with respect to a layer being equal to the ratio between: (i) the difference between the reflectivities of two multilayer structures for which the considered layer has a given thickness difference, and (ii) the given thickness difference, the thicknesses of the other layers being identical in the two multilayer structures,\n measuring, in particular by ellipsometry, the thickness of the second layer in the at least one zone of the surface of the structure, \n if the measured thickness is different from the thickness of the second layer considered in the calibration curve, applying a correction curve to the map of the thickness variations, wherein the correction curve defines, for the measured thickness of the second layer, a relationship between a thickness of the first layer and a correction factor to apply to the map of the thickness variations of the first layer, so as to determine a corrected map of thickness variations of the first layer.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 44.0
- Percentile: 90.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.41071
- Patent Class: 356.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: True
- Related Applications: ['14442081', '11819838', '15401831', '14909933', '15223424']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.6779274525127321
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5312246557401266
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.6632571728354716
- Mean Citation Score: 211.63471
- Max Citation Score: 369.191
- Similarity Product: 340.9436419669389

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 0
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test