Scatterometry performance improvement by parameter and spectrum feed-forward

Optical critical dimension (OCD) metrology using scatterometry has been widely adopted for fast and non-destructive in-line process control and yield improvement. Recently there has been increased interest in metrology performance enhancement through a holistic approach. We investigate the benefits of feed-forward of metrology information from prior process steps using samples from magnetic hard disk drive manufacturing. The scatterometry targets are composed of rather isolated gratings that are designed to have better correlation with device features. Two gratings, one with pitch ≈ 10CD, and the other with pitch ≈ 15CD, are measured at post develop and post reactive ion etch (RIE) steps. Two methods: parameter feed-forward (PFF) and spectrum feedforward (SFF) are studied in which the measurement results or spectrum collected on the blanket target at photo step are fed forward to the measurements on the grating structures at post develop or post RIE step. Compared with standard measurement without FF, for the more isolated grating at photo step, both PFF and SFF improve CD correlation from R 2 =0.96 to R 2 =0.975 using CD-SEM results measured on device as the reference. Dynamic precision and fleet measurement precision are improved by 20-60%. For post RIE step, PFF and SFF significantly improve CD correlation from R 2 =0.95, slope=1.09 to R 2 =0.975, slope=1.03 for the denser grating, and from R 2 =0.90, slope=0.79 to R 2 =0.96, slope=0.96 for the more isolated grating. Dynamic precision is generally improved by 20-40%. It is observed that both PFF and SFF are equally efficient in reducing parameter correlation for the application studied here.