Prof. Atsushi Hiraiwa Profile

Prof. Atsushi Hiraiwa

Professor at Waseda Univ

SPIE Involvement:

Author

Area of Expertise:

statistical physics , solid state physics , MOSFET gate insulator , MOSFET junction , LER/LWR analysis , power device

Atsushi Hiraiwa received the B.S. degree in physics from Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan (1973), M.S. degree in physics from the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan (1975), and Ph.D. in engineering from Tohoku University, Miyagi, Japan (1996).
In 1975 he joined Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, and was a Visiting Research Associate at Max-Planck-Institute, Grenoble, France, during 1983. He was with Renesas Electronics Corp., Ibaraki, Japan from 2007 to 2010 and, at the same time, with Semiconductor Leading Edge Technologies, Inc., Ibaraki, Japan from 2007 to 2011. He is currently with Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. He has long been carrying out research and development on fabrication of MOSFET gate dielectrics/ shallow junctions and characterization of their reliability. His current interest covers device variability, particularly LER/LWR-related issues, and wide-bandgap semiconductor devices.
He is a member of the Japan Society of Applied Physics.

SPIE Journal Paper | 30 November 2012

Noise filtering of scanning-electron-microscope images for accurate analysis of line-edge and line-width roughness

Atsushi Hiraiwa, Akio Nishida

JM3, Vol. 11, Issue 4, 043010, (November 2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.10.1117/1.JMM.11.4.043010

KEYWORDS: Image filtering, Line width roughness, Scanning electron microscopy, Optical filters, Statistical analysis, Solids, Image analysis, Error analysis, Monte Carlo methods, Line edge roughness

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Proceedings Article | 3 April 2012 Paper

Scanning-electron-microscope image processing for accurate analysis of line-edge and line-width roughness

Atsushi Hiraiwa, Akio Nishida

Proceedings Volume 8324, 83241D (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.914230

KEYWORDS: Line width roughness, Scanning electron microscopy, Image processing, Solids, Image filtering, Edge detection, Statistical analysis, Photoresist materials, Monte Carlo methods, Line edge roughness

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The control of line-edge or line-width roughness (LER/LWR) is a challenge especially for future devices that are fabricated using extreme-ultraviolet lithography. Accurate analysis of the LER/LWR plays an essential role in this challenge and requires the noise involved in scanning-electron-microscope (SEM) images to be reduced by appropriate image processing prior to analyses. In order to achieve this, the authors simulated SEM images using the Monte-Carlo method and detected line edges in experimental and these theoretical images after noise filtering using new imageanalysis software. The validity of these simulation and software was confirmed by a good agreement between the experimental and theoretical results. In the case when the image pixels aligned perpendicular (crosswise) to line edges were averaged, the variance var(φ) that was additionally induced by the image noise decreased with the number N_PIX,X of averaged pixels but turned to increase for relatively large N_PIX,X's. Real LER/LWR, however, remained unaffected. On the other hand, averaging image pixels aligned parallel (longitudinal) to line edges not only reduced var(φ) but smoothed the real LER/LWR. As a result, the nominal variance of the real LWR, obtained using simple arithmetic, monotonically decreased with the number NPIX,L of averaged pixels. Artifactual oscillations were additionally observed in power spectral densities. var(φ) in this case decreased in an inverse proportion to the square root of N_PIX,L according to the statistical mechanism clarified here. In this way, image processing has a marked effect on the LER/LWR analysis and needs to be much more cared and appropriately applied. All the aforementioned results not only constitute a solid basis of but improve previous empirical instructions for accurate analyses. The most important instruction is to avoid the longitudinal averaging and to crosswise average an optimized number of image pixels consulting the equation derived in this study.

SPIE Journal Paper | 1 July 2011

Statistical-noise effect on power spectrum of long-range-correlated line-edge and line-width roughness

Atsushi Hiraiwa, Akio Nishida

JM3, Vol. 10, Issue 03, 033008, (July 2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.10.1117/1.3616023

KEYWORDS: Fourier transforms, Line width roughness, Statistical analysis, Error analysis, Solids, Line edge roughness, Photoresist materials, Metrology, Extreme ultraviolet lithography, Transistors

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Proceedings Article | 20 April 2011 Paper

Statistical-noise effect on power spectrum of line-edge and line-width roughness with long-range correlation

Atsushi Hiraiwa, Akio Nishida

Proceedings Volume 7971, 79710J (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.878582

KEYWORDS: Line width roughness, Statistical analysis, Error analysis, Fourier transforms, Line edge roughness, Solids, Metrology, Photoresist materials, Scanning electron microscopy, Monte Carlo methods

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SPIE Journal Paper | 1 April 2011

Image-pixel averaging for accurate analysis of line-edge and linewidth roughness

Atsushi Hiraiwa, Akio Nishida

JM3, Vol. 10, Issue 02, 023010, (April 2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.10.1117/1.3598169

KEYWORDS: Line width roughness, Edge detection, Nano opto mechanical systems, Scanning electron microscopy, Statistical analysis, Line edge roughness, Error analysis, Monte Carlo methods, Electron microscopes, Interference (communication)

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SPIE Journal Paper | 1 October 2010

Statistical- and image-noise effects on experimental spectrum of line-edge and line-width roughness

Atsushi Hiraiwa, Akio Nishida

JM3, Vol. 9, Issue 04, 041210, (October 2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.10.1117/1.3504358

KEYWORDS: Statistical analysis, Line width roughness, Error analysis, Solids, Edge detection, Fourier transforms, Microelectromechanical systems, Microopto electromechanical systems, Line edge roughness, Scanning electron microscopy

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Proceedings Article | 2 April 2010 Paper

Statistically accurate analysis of line width roughness based on discrete power spectrum

Atsushi Hiraiwa, Akio Nishida

Proceedings Volume 7638, 76380N (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.846071

KEYWORDS: Line width roughness, Statistical analysis, Error analysis, Solids, Line edge roughness, Fourier transforms, Edge detection, Scanning electron microscopy, Inspection, Field effect transistors

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Proceedings Article | 27 August 1997 Paper

Statistical analysis of dynamic-random-access-memory data-retention characteristics

Atsushi Hiraiwa, Makoto Ogasawara, Nobuyoshi Natsuaki, Yutaka Itoh, Hidetoshi Iwai

Proceedings Volume 3212, (1997) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.284578

KEYWORDS: Statistical analysis, Electrodes, Information operations, Capacitors, Statistical modeling, Chlorine, Silicon, Dielectrics, Data modeling, Integrated circuits

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