A method of processing measurement data relating to a substrate processed by a manufacturing process. The method includes obtaining measurement data relating to a performance parameter for at least a portion of the substrate; and fitting the measurement data to a model by minimizing a complexity metric applied to fitting parameters of the model while not allowing the deviation between the measurement data and the fitted model to exceed a threshold value.

A method including obtaining a measurement result from a target on a substrate, by using a substrate measurement recipe; determining, by a hardware computer system, a parameter from the measurement result, wherein the parameter characterizes dependence of the measurement result on an optical path length of the target for incident radiation used in the substrate measurement recipe and the determining the parameter includes determining dependence of the measurement result on a relative change of wavelength of the incident radiation; and if the parameter is not within a specified range, adjusting the substrate measurement recipe.

A method includes irradiating an object with an illumination beam, receiving, using a detector, scattered light from a first side of the object, generating a signal based on the scattered light, comparing the signal to a reference model, and determining a quantity of wear of the first side of the object based on the comparing. The first side of the object includes a layer of a coating material, and the irradiating is from a second side of the object. The scattered light includes transmitted light through the object from the second side to the first side.

Provided are an overlay correction method for effectively correcting an overlay due to degradation of a wafer table, and an exposure method and a semiconductor device manufacturing method, which include the overlay correction method, wherein the overlay correction method includes acquiring leveling data regarding a wafer, converting the leveling data into overlay data, splitting a shot into sub-shots via shot size split, extracting a model for each sub-shot from the overlay data, and correcting an overlay parameter of exposure equipment on the basis of the model for each sub-shot, wherein the correction of the overlay parameter is applied in real time to an exposure process for the wafer in a feedforward method.

Methods and systems for determining a model configured to predict values of physical characteristics (e.g., overlay, CD) associated with a patterned substrate measured using different measurement tools. The method involves obtaining a first set of measured data for a first one or more patterned substrates using a first one or more measurement tools, and reference measurements of a physical characteristic. Also, a second set of measured data and virtual data for a second one or more patterned substrates measured using a second one or more measurement tools is obtained. A set of mapping functions between the second set and the virtual data are generated. The set of mapping functions is used to convert the first set. Then, a model is determined based on the reference measurements and the converted data such that the model predicts values of the physical characteristic that are within an acceptable threshold of the reference measurements.

This application discloses a hotspot identification system to generate process variability bands for structures of an integrated circuit capable of being fabricated utilizing at least one lithographic mask based, at least in part, on a mask layout data describing the lithographic mask and a distribution of manufacturing parameters during fabrication. The hotspot identification system can utilize the process variability bands to identify a subset of the structures that correspond to hotspots in the integrated circuit and identify corresponding values for the manufacturing parameters associated with the identified hotspots. A wafer testing system can implement a real-time wafer assessment process by comparing measured manufacturing parameters associated with a fabricated integrated circuit to the values for the manufacturing parameters associated with the identified hotspots, and dynamically identifying a disposition for the fabricated integrated circuit corresponding to one or more structures associated with the identified hotspot based on the comparison.

A method including obtaining a measurement result from a target on a substrate, by using a substrate measurement recipe; determining, by a hardware computer system, a parameter from the measurement result, wherein the parameter characterizes dependence of the measurement result on an optical path length of the target for incident radiation used in the substrate measurement recipe and the determining the parameter includes determining dependence of the measurement result on a relative change of wavelength of the incident radiation; and if the parameter is not within a specified range, adjusting the substrate measurement recipe.

Disclosed is a method for measuring a parameter of interest from a target and associated apparatuses. The method comprises obtaining measurement acquisition data relating to measurement of a target on a production substrate during a manufacturing phase; obtaining a calibration correction database and/or a trained model having been trained on said calibration correction database, operable to correct for effects in the measurement acquisition data; correcting for effects in the measurement acquisition data using first correction data from said calibration correction database and/or using said trained model so as to obtain corrected measurement data and/or a corrected parameter of interest which is/are corrected for at least said effects; and updating said calibration correction data and/or said trained model with said corrected measurement data and/or corrected parameter of interest.

An information processing apparatus includes a processor configured to determine, using a first regression model formed by a plurality of terms, a plurality of sample shot regions from a plurality of shot regions on a substrate, and a display controller configured to perform display control so that information of the plurality of sample shot regions determined by the processor is displayed on a user interface screen. The processor is configured to redetermine a plurality of sample shot regions using a second regression model formed by some terms of the plurality of terms, and the display controller is configured to update display of the user interface screen so that information of the plurality of sample shot regions redetermined by the processor is displayed on the user interface screen.

Disclosed is a method for obtaining a computationally determined interference electric field describing scattering of radiation by a pair of structures comprising a first structure and a second structure on a substrate. The method comprises determining a first electric field relating to first radiation scattered by the first structure; determining a second electric field relating to second radiation scattered by the second structure; and computationally determining the interference of the first electric field and second electric field, to obtain a computationally determined interference electric field.