Insight into the removal and reapplication of small inhibitor molecules during area-selective atomic layer deposition of SiO2

As the semiconductor industry progresses toward more complex multilayered devices with ever smaller features, accurately aligning these layers with respect to each other has become a bottleneck in the advancement to smaller transistor nodes. To avoid alignment issues, area-selective atomic layer deposition (ALD) can be employed to deposit...

High resolution acoustic metrology by combining high GHZ frequency ultrasound and scanning probe microscopy

In order to extract ever more performance from semiconductor devices on the same device area, the semiconductor industry is moving towards device structures with increasingly complex material combinations and 3D geometries. To ensure cost effective fabrication of next generation devices, metrology solutions are needed that tackle the specific...

Photo Thermal Acoustic Imaging for Sub-Surface Inspection and Alignment

We have developed a photo thermal acoustic imaging (PTAI)setup and have applied it for the characterization of sub surface features composed of materials which are commonly used in the semiconductor industry. Photo thermal acoustic imaging (PTAI) is a measurement technique that combines the practical advantages of an optical technique (non...

Three-Tiered Risk Assessment for Engineered Nanomaterials. A Use Case for the Semiconductor Industry

Safety of engineered nanomaterials is a new scientific field, which draws increasing attention in the literature. Among the challenges the field is facing are the insufficient amount and quality of nanotoxicological data and the ambiguity in the metrics describing the exposure. This results in substantial difficulties in the actual...

Characterizing electron beam induced damage in metrology and inspection of advance devices

A set of innovative immersed grating based spectrometer designs for METIS

We present innovative, immersed grating based optical designs for the SMO (Spectrograph Main Optics) module of the Mid-infrared E-ELT Imager and Spectrograph, METIS. The immersed grating allows a significant reduction of SMO volume compared to conventional echelle grating designs, because the diffraction takes place in high refractive index...

Interferometry for picometer-level dimensional stability measurements

The accuracy of high-end industrial equipment and the reliability of produced goods can be limited by dimensional drift phenomena. Examples are the life cycle stability of instrumentation for space missions and the tight requirements for measurement uncertainty in the integrated circuit semiconductor industry. Re-calibration intervals of...