The extraction of develop parameters by using cross-sectional critical shape error method

Abstract

As the minimum feature size decreases, the gap between real experimental lithography process and simulated one increases. This gap should be reduced as small as possible by inserting the correct process parameters to simulation. Unfortunately, we do not have the exact simulation parameters in most cases and we need to get more accurate parameters. Among many methods to obtain the exact parameters, we used a new automatic cross-sectional critical shape error method to get the develop parameters by comparing the experimental scanning electron microscope image with the simulated image. This new bitmap masking technique is much faster than the conventional serial cross-sectional critical shape error method.