Highlights from the Manufacturing
Engineering Laboratory, January 2007

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Impact of NIST Research and Services

SEMATECH Tech Transfer Document Highlights Work From PED Optical Research Staff

A recent document titled "Summary of 2006 NIST/SEMATECH Studies of Next Generation Overlay Metrology" prepared and authored by SEMATECH has highlighted a number of recent advances by MEL staff in the Scatterfield competence project. SEMATECH is a consortium of global semiconductor manufacturers that perform advanced R&D in semiconductor technology, nanotechnology, and related areas. SEMATECH, in collaboration with its members (who represent half of the world's semiconductor sales), partners and customers, drive the commercialization of technology innovations into manufacturing solutions. The document ties together several important research directions that have recently garnered increased interest by the semiconductor industry. The report goes into detail on collaborations between MEL's optical researchers, SEMATECH staff, and the semiconductor industry in the overlay metrology area. One goal of the report is to decrease the time to commercialization for relevant advances in optics by MEL staff. The executive summary highlighted the following benefits seen as a result of MEL research:

• NIST Through-focus Focus Metric
  • Benefits: Improved optical alignment technique and nanometer sensitivity for measurement of small grating structures.
• "Scatterfield Optics" research conducted internally at NIST
  • Benefits: Further improvement in techniques to align optical systems and ability to measure very small (10 micrometers) sub-resolution optical structures for both critical dimension (CD) and overlay (similar to angle resolved scatterometry).
• Image reversal techniques designed to detect and separate optics and target asymmetry.
  • Benefits: Technique allows for separation of optics and metrology structure asymmetries and provides a means for correcting structure asymmetry.
• Optical modeling of physical target asymmetry.
  • Benefits: Once image reversal isolates metrology structure asymmetry, this investigation allows for correction of common structure issues such as slope asymmetry, etc.
• Modeling of diffraction based overlay metrology structures
  • Benefits: Next generation investigation to optimize structures for measurement on existing scatterometry systems.
• Development of a new ultra sensitive Moire diffraction based overlay metrology structure.
  • Benefits: Developed new public domain overlay metrology structures that can increase current optical metrology system's capabilities.

These projects were directly funded by SEMATECH, supported by SEMATECH through wafer fabrication and measurement services support, or were support on NIST funds as internal projects. Several of the techniques and optics improvements presented in this paper have begun work their way into commercially available metrology systems.

Contact: Rick Silver, ext. 301 975 5609

Interactions

Three day symposium Brought Experts on the Genome & Computational Sciences

MEL's Manufacturing Metrology and Standards for the Health Care Enterprise program co-sponsored a three day symposium entitled "The Genome and the Computational Sciences: The Next Paradigms" at Brown University. This event brought together influential entrepreneurs, leaders, and visionaries from academia and industry who will build the next paradigms in genomics and biotechnology. The symposium featured 14 distinguished lecturers, including J. Craig Venter ("Genomics: From Medicine to the Environment") and Nobel Laureate Leon Cooper ("Is Theory Possible in Neuroscience?" The sessions featured lively scientific dialogue and exchange by participants and audience members. Details of the workshop can be found at http://www.brown.edu/Research/CCMB/Conferences/SYMPOSIUMDEC2006/index.htm. Video proceedings of this workshop will be available soon.

Contact: Ram D. Sriram, ext. 301 975 3507