Home
News
Blogs
Fabtech Jobs
Product Briefings
Going Places
300mm Activity Reports
Core Sections
Wafer Processing
Lithography
Fab management
Materials & Gases
Critical Components
Cleanroom
EHS
 
Find

GlobalSpec - The Engineering Search Engine
 
Home arrow Product Briefings arrow Wafer Processing arrow Combined XRR and XRF gives absolute film thickness accuracy
Flash Banner
Combined XRR and XRF gives absolute film thickness accuracy Print E-mail
Sep 27, 2005 at 07:51 PM
ImageProduct Briefing Outline: Bede has launched the latest variant of the "BedeMetrix" F X-ray metrology tool, which delivers non-destructive, high speed film thickness measurement on patterned wafers through combined XRR (X-ray Reflectivity) and XRF (X-ray Flourescence). The result is an extended thickness measurement range
of 1 nm to 10 μm on a wide range of material types. Proprietary small spot X-ray optics enable measurement on test pads and in scribe lines down to 100 μm for XRR and 30 μm for XRF, for in-line measurement on product wafers.


Problem: The measuring of layer thickness with traditional techniques such as optical, opto-acoustic and XRF is already exceeding the process control limits of advanced process nodes. Greater attention is now required in examining the cyrstalline structures, such as interconnect barrier layers in root cause failure analysis. Traditional inspection techniques are not able to measure thickness at the atomic level. Ellipsometry is not best suited for this application as it cannot measure
non-transparent films and analysis is strongly influenced by changes in the optical properties of a given film. AFM's cannot measure layer thickness without special sample preparation and have slow throughput.

Solution: Combining XRR and XRF provides much improved complimentary information about barrier films and their cyrstalline structures. X-rays incident at a low angle to the layer surface. As incident angles are increased X-rays begin to penetrate the surface and are transmitted into the film. At a critical point the X-rays will be partially reflected from interfaces in the layer structure causing interference. By scanning the incident angle and measuring the X-rays scattered through twice this angle, an interference pattern is obtained which provides data on the layer structure. Measurements are absolute and only rely on the measurement of angles, rather than reliance on optical constants or monitor wafers.

Applications:
Thin film thickness

Platform:
The BedeMetrix family of X-ray metrology tools consists of the BedeMetrix-L process development tool and the BedeMetrix-F tools for dedicated process control. The BedeMetrix-F is available in three primary configurations for strained silicon, metal film structure determination, and high-speed thickness measurement.

Availability:
2005 onwards.


Readers' comments
Comment by GUEST on 2007-12-18 10:33:07
OK! 
but nothing gives absolute accuracy I guess



Bookmark with:
DeliciousDiggredditStumbleUpon

Visit Fabtech Jobs websiteSubscribe to Fabtech weekly newsletter

Related articles
New Product: KLA-Tencor offers the Aleris 8500 for composition and film thickness measurement  (03/12/2007)
New Product: KLA-Tencor offers the Aleris 8500 for composition and film thickness measurement  (03/12/2007)
Combined ellipsometry and scatterometry in a single tool  (27/09/2005)
Combined XRR and XRF gives absolute film thickness accuracy  (27/09/2005)
15th Edition: Measurement of Metal Film Thickness for Copper Interconnects  (02/02/2005)

Related jobs
IC Failure Analysis Engineer  (Los Angeles, 31/01/2008)
Failure Analysis Engineer  (, 31/01/2008)
Sr. Opto-Mechanical Engineer   (Milpitas, 14/09/2007)
Software Engineer  (San Jose, 14/09/2007)
Quality Manager  (Wilton, 10/08/2007)
300mm