High aspect ratio topography reconstruction in sub-resonant atomic force microscopy exploiting stick-slip dynamics

Sub-resonant tapping atomic force microscopy enables topography measurements with limited lateral tipsample forces, while overcoming the limitations of excessive damage and measurement errors that occur during amplitude modulated operation on high aspect ratio samples. Therefore, it is a candidate to enable process quality monitoring in...

Large dynamic range Atomic Force Microscope

In semiconductor manufacturing, the shrink following Moore's law requires ever tighter overlay and registration between the different (material) layers. For accurately characterising this overlay and registration, TNO has developed a large dynamic range atomic force microscope demonstrator; the LDR-AFM can measure marker-to-feature distances...

3D Advance Metrology by means of 3D Atomic Force Microscopy

We developed a new 3D-AFM technique that enables imaging of high aspect ratio trenches. By measuring both lateral and vertical forces on a cantilever tip, a subharmonic mode based on the attractive tip-sample forces becomes feasible. This enables the measurement of true 3D information of samples without causing damage. This is especially...

Results from the Large Dynamic Range Atomic Force Microscope

TNO developed a novel Large Dynamic Range Atomic Force Microscope (LDRAFM), designed for sub-nm accurate metrology. The current work provides an overview of recent developments and presents the results obtained after final integration of the complete system. Results indicate impressive stability over long range, enabling subnm metrology...

High-throughput scanning probe instruments for nanopatterning, alignment, and overlay metrology

As the pitch approaches the 10nm node, in order to meet current and future patterning challenges, high resolution techniques are required, complementary to extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) for high volume manufacturing of nanodevices. These complementary techniques should have the following specifications: 1) High patterning resolution,...

High-throughput atomic force microscopes operating in parallel

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is an essential nanoinstrument technique for several applications such as cell biology and nanoelectronics metrology and inspection. The need for statistically significant sample sizes means that data collection can be an extremely lengthy process in AFM. The use of a single AFM instrument is known for its very low...

Nanopositioning MEMS stage for high speed positioning of metamaterials lenses for use in high resolution optical imaging

High resolution and high throughput imaging are typically mutually exclusive. While there is a wide range of techniques to image features beyond the diffraction limit of light, they all have their own benefits and drawbacks, but they are often very slow compared to optical systems. As such, extending the performance of optical microscopes...

Automated cantilever exchange and optical alignment for high-throughput parallel Atomic Force Microscopy

In atomic force microscopy (AFM), the exchange and alignment of the AFM cantilever with respect to the optical beam and position-sensitive detector (PSD) are often performed manually. This process is tedious and time consuming, and sometimes damages the cantilever or tip. To increase the throughput of AFM in industrial applications, the ability...

High throughput, parallel scanning probe microscope for nanometrology and nanopatterning applications

Scanning Probe microscope (SPM) is an important nanoinstrument for several applications such as bioresearch, metrology, inspection and nanopatterning. Single SPM is associated with relatively slow rate of scanning and low throughput measurement, thus not being suitable for scanning large samples such as semiconductor wafers and photolithography...

Demonstration of Parallel Scanning Probe Microscope for high throughput metrology and inspection

With the device dimensions moving towards the 1X node and below, the semiconductor industry is rapidly approaching the point where existing metrology, inspection and review tools face huge challenges in terms of resolution, the ability to resolve 3D and the throughput. Due to the advantages of sub-nanometer resolution and the ability of true 3D...

Sub-50 nm metrology on extreme ultra violet chemically amplified resist: A systematic assessment

With lithographic patterning dimensions decreasing well below 50 nm, it is of high importance to understand metrology at such small scales. This paper presents results obtained from dense arrays of contact holes (CHs) with various Critical Dimension (CD) between 15 and 50 nm, as patterned in a chemically amplified resist using an ASML EUV...

Development of a detachable high speed miniature scanning probe microscope for large area substrates inspection

We have developed a high speed, miniature scanning probe microscope (MSPM) integrated with a Positioning Unit (PU) for accurately positioning the MSPM on a large substrate. This combination enables simultaneous, parallel operation of many units on a large sample for high throughput measurements. The size of the MSPM is 19 × 45 × 70 mm3. It...

A miniaturized, high frequency mechanical scanner for high speed atomic force microscope using suspension on dynamically determined points

One of the major limitations in the speed of the atomic force microscope (AFM) is the bandwidth of the mechanical scanning stage, especially in the vertical (z) direction. According to the design principles of “light and stiff” and “static determinacy,” the bandwidth of the mechanical scanner is limited by the first eigenfrequency of the AFM...

High-throughput parallel SPM for metrology, defect and mask inspection

Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) is a promising candidate for accurate assessment of metrology and defects on wafers and masks, however it has traditionally been too slow for high-throughput applications, although recent developments have significantly pushed the speed of SPM [1,2]. In this paper we present new results obtained with our...

Systematic characterization of optical beam deflection measurement system for micro and nanomechanical systems

Optical beam deflection (OBD) measurement method is very popular in various types of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and micro/nanomechanical sensors to measure a mechanical motion. This paper reports the detail design and implementation of a very low drift (2 nm over 1000 s), high bandwidth (40 MHz) and low noise (15 fm/VHz) OBD measurement...