Line-profile and critical-dimension correlation between a normal-incidence optical CD metrology system and SEM

Process tolerances for critical dimensions are becoming increasingly severe as lithographic technology drives the minimum integrated-circuit feature size toward 0.1 micrometers and below. In response, Optical Critical Dimension metrology (OCD), an optical-wavelength light-diffraction technique, is currently undergoing an industry-wide evaluation as a fast, accurate, and non-destructive sub-100nm line-width monitor. As such, effective process monitoring requires detailed understanding of the correlation between CD-SEM and the OCD measurements. Correlation in CD measurements between the OCD technique and SEM techniques is investigated in this paper by measuring photo-resist gratings on a polysilicon gate film stack. Intra-grating CD variation is shown to account for scatter in the correlation plot. A positive offset in the correlation is also observed and a mechanism is proposed to account for the discrepancy. Correlation between CD-SEM and OCD is also demonstrated for samples with three different pitch sizes. A qualitative line-profile correlation between cross-section SEM (X-SEM) and OCD is presented for photoresist gratings in a Focus Exposure Matrix (FEM).