A sensor for use in lithographic apparatus of an immersion type and which, in use, comes into contact with the immersion liquid is arranged so that the thermal resistance of a first heat path from a transducer of the sensor to a temperature conditioning device is less than the thermal resistance of a second heat flow path from the transducer to the immersion liquid. Thus, heat flow is preferentially towards the temperature conditioning device and not the immersion liquid so that temperature-induced disturbance in the immersion liquid is reduced or minimized.

[Object] To provide a shape measurement apparatus that, in measuring the unevenness shape of a measurement object by a light-section method, enables the shape of the measurement object to be measured precisely even when the distance between the measurement object and an image capturing apparatus fluctuates.

[Solution] Provided is a shape measurement apparatus including: a linear light position detection unit that detects, from a captured image of linear light applied to a measurement object by a linear light irradiation apparatus that is captured by an image capturing apparatus, a linear light position of the linear light; a distance computation unit that computes a distance from the image capturing apparatus to the measurement object, on the basis of a distance difference between a reference linear light position detected by the linear light position detection unit when the measurement object is positioned at a position of a predetermined reference distance from the image capturing apparatus and the linear light position detected by the linear light position detection unit, the reference distance, and an angle formed by an optical axis of the image capturing apparatus and an emission direction of the linear light; a focus adjustment unit that adjusts focus of the image capturing apparatus on the basis of the distance from the image capturing apparatus to the measurement object; and a shape computation unit that computes a shape of the measurement object on the basis of the captured image.

A computer implemented method for simulating an aerial image of a design of a photolithography mask comprises: obtaining an illumination angle distribution in the pupil plane of the light source; selecting a number of illumination angles by solving an optimization problem; for each selected illumination angle, simulating an electromagnetic near field; for at least one further illumination angle of the illumination angle distribution in the pupil plane of the light source approximating an electromagnetic near field; and obtaining the simulated aerial image of the design of the photolithography mask by superimposing the intensities obtained by imaging the electromagnetic near fields into a wafer plane. Systems can detect defects or assess the relevance of defects or for aligning aerial images.

A method is provided for determining an OPC model comprising: recording an aerial image by use of a mask inspection microscope, wherein the aerial image comprises at least one segment of a mask; simulating a plurality of aerial images which comprise at least the segment, proceeding from a mask design and from predefined parameters of an optical model which is part of the OPC model, wherein the parameters differ for each of the simulated aerial images of the plurality of aerial images; determining differences between the measured aerial image and the simulated aerial images; determining those parameters for which the differences between simulated aerial image and measured aerial image are the least.

In addition, a mask inspection microscope for carrying out the method is provided.

The present invention relates to lithographic apparatuses and processes, and more particularly to tools for co-optimizing illumination sources and masks for use in lithographic apparatuses and processes. According to certain aspects, the present invention enables full chip pattern coverage while lowering the computation cost by intelligently selecting a small set of critical design patterns from the full set of clips to be used in source and mask optimization. Optimization is performed only on these selected patterns to obtain an optimized source. The optimized source is then used to optimize the mask (e.g. using OPC and manufacturability verification) for the full chip, and the process window performance results are compared. If the results are comparable to conventional full-chip SMO, the process ends, otherwise various methods are provided for iteratively converging on the successful result.

Disclosed herein is a computer-implemented method for determining an overlapping process window (OPW) of an area of interest on a portion of a design layout for a device manufacturing process for imaging the portion onto a substrate, the method including: obtaining a plurality of features in the area of interest; obtaining a plurality of values of one or more processing parameters of the device manufacturing process; determining existence of defects, probability of the existence of defects, or both in imaging the plurality of features by the device manufacturing process under each of the plurality of values; and determining the OPW of the area of interest from the existence of defects, the probability of the existence of defects, or both.

System and method for measuring an aerial image are provided. The system may include a lighting unit for providing illuminating light to pass through a mask to form initial light. An imaging unit is configured for imaging the initial light to form imaging light. A beam splitting unit is for splitting the imaging light into projection light and reference light. A projection light is projected to a substrate to form a mask image in the substrate, and the substrate reflects the projection light to form first reflected light onto the beam splitting unit. A reflecting unit is for receiving the reference light to form second reflected light, and for projecting the second reflected light onto the beam splitting unit, the second reflected light and the first reflected light interfering with each other to form interference light. A measuring unit is for measuring an aerial image formed from the interference light.

A method detects a position of a target in an image using a template having first to Nth feature points. The method includes obtaining an index indicating correlation between the template and the image by repeating processing for each relative positions of the template with respect to the image, while sequentially setting first to nth (nN) feature points as a feature point of interest. When the feature point of interest is a Jth feature point, whether an intermediate index indicating the correlation obtained based on processing of the first to Jth feature points satisfies a censoring condition is determined, and processing of (J+1)th and subsequent feature points is canceled if the intermediate index satisfies the censoring condition.

When a reticle is first used, the reticle is loaded in a projection exposure device and measured by either oblique measurement or random measurement, thereby avoiding the fear of uneven sampling and determining the reticle transmittance of the entire reticle as the parent population, without increasing the sampling count. The same effect can be obtained by making the measurement spot size, which is fixed in general, variable and by changing the angle of incidence in relation to the measurement spot size.

A defect prediction method for a device manufacturing process involving processing one or more patterns onto a substrate, the method including: determining values of one or more processing parameters under which the one or more patterns are processed; and determining or predicting, using the values of the one or more processing parameters, an existence, a probability of existence, a characteristic, and/or a combination selected from the foregoing, of a defect resulting from production of the one or more patterns with the device manufacturing process.