Sensitivity analysis for indirect measurement in scatterometry and the reconstruction of periodic grating structures

Abstract

In this work, we discuss some aspects of numerical algorithms for the determination of periodic surface structures (gratings) from light diffraction patterns. With decreasing structure details of lithography masks, increasing demands on suitable metrology techniques arise. Methods like scatterometry as a non-imaging indirect optical method are applied to simple periodic line structures in order to evaluate the quality of the manufacturing process. Using scatterometry, geometrical parameters of periodic structures including period (pitch), side-wall angles, heights, top and bottom widths of trapezoid shaped bridges can be determined. The mathematical model for the scattering is based on the time-harmonic Maxwell's equations and reduces in case of grating structures to the Helmholtz equation. For the numerical simulation, e.g. finite element methods can be applied to solve the corresponding boundary value problems. More challenging is the inverse problem, where the grating geometry is to be reconstructed from the measured diffraction patterns. Restricting the class of gratings and the set of measurements ...