Abstract
Due to the rich information provided by the Mueller matrices when the most general conical diffraction configuration is considered, the Mueller matrix polarimetry has demonstrated a great potential in semiconductor manufacturing. As the configurations of the incidence and azimuthal angles have different influences on the measurement accuracy, it is necessary to select an optimal one among the multitude of possible options. We introduce the norm of a configuration error propagating matrix to assess the measurement accuracy for different measurement configurations. The optimal configuration for a Si grating sample was achieved by minimizing the norm of the configuration error propagating matrix. Experimental results show the agreement between the theoretically predicted optimal configuration and the experimental exhibited one obtained by using a dual-rotating compensator Mueller matrix polarimeter and thus demonstrated the validity of the proposed optimization method.
Highlights
As a nonimaging optical measurement technique, the Mueller matrix polarimetry (MMP) has been successfully introduced for critical dimension and overlay metrology recently.[1,2,3] Due to the rich information provided by the Mueller matrices when the grating lines are no longer perpendicular to the incidence plane but are positioned at different azimuthal angles, MMP has demonstrated a great potential in semiconductor manufacturing
The measurement configuration optimization for spectroscopic MMP was investigated to find an optimal combination of the incidence and azimuthal angles, with which more accurate measurement can be achieved
We derived a systematic error propagating formula which relates the systematic errors in the extracted structural parameters with the error sources such as the configuration error and the intrinsic systematic error in the measured Mueller matrices
Summary
As a nonimaging optical measurement technique, the Mueller matrix polarimetry (MMP) has been successfully introduced for critical dimension and overlay metrology recently.[1,2,3] Due to the rich information provided by the Mueller matrices when the grating lines are no longer perpendicular to the incidence plane but are positioned at different azimuthal angles, MMP has demonstrated a great potential in semiconductor manufacturing. We can obtain all the Mueller matrices by continuously varying the wavelength and the incidence and azimuthal angles to achieve high measurement precision and accuracy. The combination of the selected wavelengths and incidence and azimuthal angles is defined as the measurement configuration. We can fix the incidence and azimuthal angles in proper values while continuously varying the wavelengths in an available range. We can fix the wavelength and azimuthal angles in proper values while continuously varying the incidence angles in an available range. A multitude of possible measurement configurations can be chosen by making different combinations of the three measurement conditions. It is worth while to point out that there are great discrepancies in the final measurement precision and accuracy in different configurations. There is a need for MMP to choose an optimal one from the multitude of possible measurement configurations
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