Toward defect guard-banding of EUV exposures by full chip optical wafer inspection of EUV mask defect adders

Abstract

The detection of EUV mask adder defects has been investigated with an optical wafer defect inspection system employing a methodology termed Die-to-"golden" Virtual Reference Die (D2VRD). Both opaque and clear type mask absorber programmed defects were inspected and characterized over a range of defect sizes, down to (4x mask) 40 nm. The D2VRD inspection system was capable of identifying the corresponding wafer print defects down to the limit of the defect printability threshold at approximately 30 nm (1x wafer). The efficacy of the D2VRD scheme on full chip wafer inspection to suppress random process defects and identify real mask defects is demonstrated. Using defect repeater analysis and patch image classification of both the reference die and the scanned die enables the unambiguous identification of mask adder defects.