Recent advancements in atomic force microscopy

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) topographic imaging has enabled semiconductor manufacturing research and development since early '90s. Unique strength over competing metrology techniques includes the potential for undistorted, local high resolution information. Comparatively slow throughput has traditionally limited high volume manufacturing (HVM) deployment. Here, we discuss the advantages of a multi-head AFM system with miniaturized high-speed SPMs working in parallel. In addition, we extend traditional AFM techniques to selective imaging and metrology of subsurface 3D structures and show a path to enabling Overlay metrology through opaque hard mask layers.