Improved ptychographic inspection of EUV reticles via inclusion of prior information

Applied Optics
Paolo AnsuinelliH P Urbach

Abstract

The development of actinic mask metrology tools represents one of the major challenges to be addressed on the roadmap of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Technological advancements in EUV lithography result in the possibility to print increasingly fine and highly resolved structures on a silicon wafer; however, the presence of fine-scale defects, interspersed in the printable mask layout, may lead to defective wafer prints. Hence, the development of actinic methods for review of potential defect sites becomes paramount. Here, we report on a ptychographic algorithm that makes use of prior information about the object to be retrieved, generated by means of rigorous computations, to improve the detectability of defects whose dimensions are of the order of the wavelength. The comprehensive study demonstrates that the inclusion of prior information as a regularizer in the ptychographic optimization problem results in a higher reconstruction quality and an improved robustness to noise with respect to the standard ptychographic iterative engine (PIE). We show that the proposed method decreases the number of scan positions necessary to retrieve a high-quality image and relaxes requirements in terms of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)....Continue Reading

References

Feb 16, 2007·Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, Image Science, and Vision·Xiuhong WeiH Paul Urbach
Jun 23, 2009·Ultramicroscopy·Andrew M Maiden, John M Rodenburg
Jan 25, 2011·Biomedical Optics Express·Qianqian FangDavid A Boas
Nov 4, 2011·Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, Image Science, and Vision·Martijn C van Beurden
Apr 3, 2012·Nature Materials·A SzameitM Segev
Jul 7, 2015·New Journal of Physics·Roarke HorstmeyerChanghuei Yang
Sep 9, 2015·Nature Communications·Pavel SidorenkoOren Cohen
May 6, 2019·Optics Express·Huibin ChangStefano Marchesini

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Citations

Nov 5, 2021·Nature Communications·Sergey ZaykoClaus Ropers

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