Placement measurement and FE modeling results for distortion control of stencil masks

Abstract

Distortion control is one of the key issues to solve for IPL stencil mask development. Placement is measured by a LEICA LMS IPRO system. Registration as well as overlay results and the error contributions of the measurement will be presented. The production flow of IPL stencil masks is marked by the fact, that e-beam patterning is done on the bulk wafer, whereas the removal of the bulk silicon and the creation of the free membrane takes place at the end of the process, after silicon trench etching. Therefore, distortions appear at the release of the membrane after bulk silicon etching and oxide removal. At e-beam patterning, the mask wafer blank is pre-stressed by the sum of the stresses of the different layers as bulk silicon, silicon oxide, the silicon of the latter membrane and resist. Additionally, the initial warp and bow of the mask wafer blank have to be considered. The analysis of the finite element modeling compares the placement at e-beam writing to the situation after membrane completion. With this information, the efficiency of a FE-supported software correction before mask patterning can be improved. Measurements of masks with different stress values are to be discussed in order to deduce the optimum stress values for IPL stencil masks.