The march towards miniaturization of semiconductor devices places strong constraints on metrology techniques. Effective process control for current and next-gen device manufacture demands characterization of complex three-dimensional structures, accurately, quickly, and preferably non-destructively. In isolation, no currently existing metrology technique can meet all these challenges. We present a hybrid metrology solution in the form of a Physics-Enabled AI system, based on the commercial software tool SandBox Studio AI. Through the integration of information from diverse metrology sources, the system adeptly generates detailed, high-fidelity 3D reconstructions and allows for the extraction of measurements from various planes within the structure, while minimizing measurement-related expenses and material waste. The method’s efficacy was demonstrated on two 3D structures: Gate-All-Around (GAA) FET and 3D NAND Slit, achieving sub-nm accuracy even with limited metrology input data.
Reducing process development time and speeding up time to market are perennial challenges in the microelectronics industry. The development of etch models that permit optimizations across the wafer would enable manufacturers to optimize process design flows and predict process defects before a single wafer is run. The challenges of across-wafer uniformity optimizations include the large variety of features across the wafer, etch variations that occur at multiple scales within the plasma chamber, feature metrology, and computationally expensive model development. Compounding these challenges are trade-offs between data quality and time/cost-effectiveness, the wide variety of measurement information provided by different tools, and the sparsity and inconsistency of human-collected data. We address these challenges with a feature and wafer level modeling approach. First, experiments are conducted for a variety of etch conditions (e.g., pressure, gas composition, flow rate, temperature, power, and bias). Second, a feature level model is calibrated at multiple sites across the wafer based on OCD and/or cross-sectional SEM measurements. Finally, the calibrated model is used to predict an optimal set of process conditions to preserve uniformity across the wafer and to meet recipe targets. We demonstrate the methodology using SandBox Studio™ AI for a FinFET application. Specifically, we show the rapid and automated calibration of feature level models using experimental measurements of the 3D feature etch at a variety of process conditions. Automated image segmentation of X-SEM data is also performed here for single case using Weave® to demonstrate how such data can be acquired quickly in a development environment. We then demonstrate the effectiveness of the reduced-order model to predict optimal recipe conditions to improve overall recipe performance. We show how, with this hybrid-metrology computational approach, a process window that yields 89.2% of the wafer can be captured.
Identification of optimal recipes for multi-step and cyclic etch processes where the outcome of each step depends on the progression of the previous steps is a major challenge. Selecting the order and duration of each step is typically performed by a tedious trial and error process where the number of experimental trials scales exponentially with process complexity. Here we present a simulation-based methodology that significantly accelerates the process. We use limited experimental data taken at various process conditions, which may include pressure, gas type, gas flow rate, power, bias, and time to calibrate a step-aware reduced-order physics-based etch and deposition model. This model is used to generate predictions with steps permuted in any desired order and duration. The calibrated model predicts ordering, timing, and possible cycling of each step to achieve desired etch targets. The methodology is demonstrated on a multilayer stack with three possible steps, including etch and deposition. It is shown that the total number of experiments required for the proposed methodology is significantly less than that required by standard methods like full-factorial design of experiment. We also demonstrate how the etch data and the resulting calibrated model can be used to determine the optimal etch recipe for different aperture and/or mask geometries without having to perform further experiments.
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