Defect dispositioning in a reticle qualification process

As integrated circuit manufacturing complexity continues to intensity, it becomes increasingly critical to verify reticle quality. In addition, since the capital investment required to stay ahead of the technology curve is so great, the extension of existing toolsets to accommodate next generation technology becomes more practical. Through the use of advanced reticles with various optical enhancement techniques, photolithographers have been able to extend the production capability of their existing tools. It has been shown that the traditional models of defect resolution or printability cannot be used. Mask errors have been enhanced by the fact that photolithography has been printing images considerably smaller than the exposure wavelength. From a manufacturing standpoint, reticle qualification requires inspection at incoming and on a regular basis thereafter. Several methods have been reported which detail the process and frequency of reticle inspections. A natural consequence of documented for verifying printability, such as AIMS, stepper simulation, etc. The purpose of this paper is to report on the success achieved in quickly verifying defect printability on wafers in a manufacturing environment using X-LINK, a software option for the KLA9x System Controller. This utility translates KLA-Tencor's reticle inspection reports to KLARF files such that defective sites can be analyzed on reticle or wafer review tools. In this study wafer review tools were used to drive directly to the wafer site(s) of printability concern. This paper reports on how this process was implemented to expedite reticle dispositioning and provide feedback for validating reticle specifications.