Lensless metrology for semiconductor lithography at EUV

The production of modern semiconductor devices is based on photolithography, a process through which a pattern engraved on a mask is projected on a silicon wafer coated with a photosensitive material. In the past few decades, continuous technological progress in this field allowed the industry to follow Moore’s law by reducing the size of the printed features. This was achieved by progressively increasing the numerical aperture of the projection system and reducing the wavelength. The latest lithography platforms for semiconductor manufacturing employ Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) light at a wavelength of 13.5 nm. The metrology for the optics and the components of such platforms is not fully mature yet. Specifically, the inspection of the EUV photomask is still an open issue as no commercial solutions are currently available. Here we describe a lensless approach to this problem, based on coherent diffraction imaging at EUV that overcomes the main technological issues linked to the conventional mask inspection approach.