Microsphere-assisted hyperspectral imaging: super-resolution, non-destructive metrology for semiconductor devices.

As semiconductor devices shrink and their manufacturing processes advance, accurately measuring in-cell critical dimensions (CD) becomes increasingly crucial. Traditional test element group (TEG) measurements are becoming inadequate for representing the fine, repetitive patterns in cell blocks. Conventional non-destructive metrology technologies like optical critical dimension (OCD) are limited due to their large spot diameter of approximately 25 µm, which impedes their efficacy for detailed in-cell structural analysis. Consequently, there is a pressing need for small-spot and non-destructive metrology methods. To address this limitation, we demonstrate a microsphere-assisted hyperspectral imaging (MAHSI) system, specifically designed for small spot optical metrology with super-resolution. Utilizing microsphere-assisted super-resolution imaging, this system achieves an optical resolution of 66 nm within a field of view of 5.6 µm × 5.6 µm. This approach effectively breaks the diffraction limit, significantly enhancing the magnification of the system. The MAHSI system incorporating hyperspectral imaging with a wavelength range of 400-790 nm, enables the capture of the reflection spectrum at each camera pixel. The achieved pixel resolution, which is equivalent to the measuring spot size, is 14.4 nm/pixel and the magnification is 450X. The MAHSI system enables measurement of local uniformity in critical areas like corners and edges of DRAM cell blocks, areas previously challenging to inspect with conventional OCD methods. To our knowledge, this approach represents the first global implementation of microsphere-assisted hyperspectral imaging to address the metrology challenges in complex 3D structures of semiconductor devices.

A passive method to compensate nonlinearity in a homodyne interferometer.

This study presents an analysis of the nonlinearity resulting from polarization crosstalk at a polarizing beam splitter (PBS) and a wave plate (WP) in a homodyne interferometer. From a theoretical approach, a new compensation method involving a realignment of the axes of WPs to some specific angles according to the characteristics of the PBS is introduced. This method suppresses the nonlinearity in a homodyne interferometer to 0.36 nm, which would be 3.75 nm with conventional alignment methods of WPs.

High resolution interferometer with multiple-pass optical configuration.

An interferometer having fourteen times higher resolution than a conventional single-pass interferometer has been developed by making multiple-pass optical path. To embody the multiple-pass optical configuration, a two-dimensional corner cube array block was designed, and its symmetric structure minimized the measurement error. The effect from the alignment error and the imperfection of corner cube is calculated as picometer level. An experiment proves that the suggested interferometer has about 45 nm of optical resolution and its nonlinearity is about 0.5 nm in peak-to-valley.

Efficient double-filtering with a single acousto-optic tunable filter.

We describe an efficient double-filtering method that uses a single acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) to improve the spectral resolution and intrinsic sidelobes for the spectral domain analysis systems. Double filtering with a single AOTF is realized by applying a unique feedback scheme based on the fact that incident light can be diffracted into two orthogonally polarized beams of light by an AOTF. Our theoretical explanation attempts to address and satisfy the main prerequisite for the proposed idea. The experimental results confirm that the proposed method achieves a 20% to 30% improvement in spectral resolution and 10 dB suppression of sidelobes with minimized light loss for the extraordinary incident light. We believe that the results of using an AOTF are comparable to the results achieved with two AOTFs in tandem.

A facile approach to the fabrication of graphene/polystyrene nanocomposite by in situ microemulsion polymerization.

This paper reports a large scale production route for polystyrene (PS) nanoparticle-functionalized graphene sheets using water based in situ microemulsion polymerization. The higher surface area of the graphene basal plane and the better proximity of the reactant species in in situ microemulsion polymerization were used to functionalize the graphene sheets using PS nanoparticles. The thermal properties of the PS were improved with the incorporation of graphene in the composite. The modified graphene exhibited good compatibility and interactions with the host PS matrix to form conducting PS films.