On Product Overlay (OPO) is a critical budget for advanced lithography. LithoInSight (LIS), an ASML application product, has proven to improve the ability of advanced process control (APC) for overlay with accurate fingerprint estimation and optimized scanner correction. It is now often used as Process of Record (PoR) for performing chuck/lot based run-to-run (R2R) control in a High Volume Manufacturing (HVM) environment. In order to further improve the on-product performance given the ever-tightening overlay spec. in advanced nodes, the question of how to reduce wafer-to-wafer process-induced variation has been asked frequently. Studies have shown that the wafer-to-wafer overlay variation is driven by certain critical process contexts. Aiming to bring a solution to the HVM phase, the ASML and Micron Data Science teams developed a Wafer Level Grouping Control (WLGC) methodology to perform overlay control given the process context information. This methodology has been implemented in one of the Micron production fabs, and demonstrated both reduced wafer-to-wafer (W2W) overlay variation and improved device yield on a yield-critical layer for a product from Micron 1z DRAM node.
With shrinking design rules, the overall patterning requirements are getting aggressively tighter and tighter. For the 5-nm node and beyond, on-product overlay below 2.5nm is required. Achieving such performance levels will not only need optimization of scanner performance but a holistic tuning of all process steps. In previous work, it has been shown that process-induced pattern asymmetry has significant impact on overlay performance at wafer edge and can be partially compensated by applying high-order scanner corrections or optimizing metrology targets. Today, we present the reduction of process-induced pattern asymmetry in a tunable etch system and demonstrate the related on-product overlay improvement combined with scanner corrections.
In our work we utilize etch tools (Lam Kiyo® conductor etch systems) with proprietary edge tuning technology that can be used to reduce the etch-related asymmetry at the wafer edge. In combination to this unique method, we evaluate the impact of high order corrections per exposure field to compensate for process asymmetry at the wafer edge with a state-of-the-art 1.35 NA immersion scanner (NXT:1970Ci).
The study is done on dedicated test wafers with 10-nm logic node design. We use angle-resolved scatterometry (YieldStar® S-250), atomic force microscopy, and SEM cross-sections to characterize process asymmetry. We present experimental investigation of the effect of etch tuning and scanner corrections on the pattern shift and the resulting overlay. In particular, we present results showing a reduction of etch-induced pattern shift by 12nm at wafer radius 147mm.
Results show that asymmetry can be addressed by both, litho compensation and etch tuning, and bring on-product overlay down to the required level. We discuss the benefit of the correction techniques especially for thick hard mask layers (the pattern shift scales linear with hard mask thickness) and evaluate a combined correction scenario, where preventive etch tuning and feed-back based scanner corrections are used. We conclude that a holistic tuning of all process steps will be required to fulfill overlay requirements of future nodes.
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