A scatterometry measurement system includes an objective lens with a central obscuration and an illumination source configured to illuminate a scatterometry target through the objective lens with a first illumination beam at a first illumination angle and a second illumination beam at a second illumination angle in which the scatterometry target includes periodic structures located in at least two layers. The objective lens collects at least one diffracted order from the first illumination beam and at least one diffracted order from the second illumination beam such that the at least one diffracted order from the first illumination beam and the at least one diffracted order from the second illumination beam have a non-overlapping distribution in a portion of an imaging pupil plane not blocked by the central obscuration.

There is provided a method for manufacturing a semiconductor structure, including: preparing a plate-like semiconductor structure; and inspecting the semiconductor structure, the inspection of the semiconductor further including: performing a measurement of irradiating a surface of the semiconductor structure with a light from a light source in an oblique direction to the surface, and detecting a reflected light reflected or scattered by the surface by a two-dimensional detector, at a plurality of locations within at least a predetermined range of the surface of the semiconductor structure, to acquire a reflected light distribution that is a distribution of an integrated value obtained by integrating intensity of the reflected light measured at the plurality of locations, with respect to a position at the detector; and fitting the reflected light distribution by a multiple Gaussian function obtained by adding at least a first Gaussian function and a second Gaussian function distributed more widely than the first Gaussian function, to acquire a parameter of the second Gaussian function as an index corresponding to a surface roughness of the semiconductor structure.

A substrate inspection system is provided to monitor characteristics of a substrate, while the substrate is disposed within (or being transferred into/out of) a processing unit of a liquid dispense substrate processing system. The inspection system is integrated within a liquid dispense substrate processing system and includes one or more optical sensors of a reflectometer (such as a spectrometer or laser-based transceiver) configured to obtain spectral data from a substrate. A controller is coupled to receive the spectral data from the optical sensors(s). The one or more optical sensors (or one or more optical fibers coupled to the rest of the optical sensor hardware) are coupled at locations within the substrate processing system. The controller analyzes the spectral data received from the optical sensors(s) to detect characteristic(s) of the substrate including, but not limited to, film thickness (FT), refractive index changes, and associated critical dimension (CD) changes.

A method for detecting an internal crack in a wafer includes a first image recording step of applying near infrared light having a transmission wavelength to a reference wafer having the same configuration as a target wafer to be subjected to the detection of the internal crack, thereby obtaining a first image of the reference wafer having no internal crack and then recording the first image, a processing step of processing the target wafer, a second image recording step of applying the near infrared light to the target wafer, thereby obtaining a second image of the processed target wafer and then recording the second image, and an internal crack detecting step of removing the same image information between the first image and the second image from the second image to obtain a residual image, thereby detecting the residual image as the internal crack in the target wafer.

An inspection system is disclosed. In one embodiment, the inspection system includes an interferometer sub-system configured to acquire an interferogram of a sample. The inspection system may further include a controller communicatively coupled to the interferometer sub-system. The controller is configured to: receive the interferogram from the interferometer sub-system; generate a phase map of the sample based on the received interferogram, wherein the phase map includes a plurality of pixels; select a sub-set of pixels of the plurality of pixels of the phase map to be used for phase unwrapping procedures; perform one or more phase unwrapping procedures on the sub-set of pixels of the phase map to generate an unwrapped phase map; and generate a surface height map of the sample based on the unwrapped phase map.

Scatterometry measurement systems, illumination configurations and respective methods are provided, which comprise illumination beams that have vertical projections on a target plane comprising both a parallel component and a perpendicular component, with respect to a target measurement direction. The illumination beams propagate at an angle to the plane defined by the measurement direction and a normal to the targets surface and generate diffraction images which are off-center at the imaging pupil plane. The eccentric diffraction images are spatially arranged to avoid overlaps and to correspond to measurement requirements such as spot sizes, number of required diffraction orders and so forth. The illumination beams may be implemented using illumination pupil masks, which provide a simple way to increase scatterometry measurements throughput.

A height detection apparatus successively changes the brightness of white light from a first level to a second level in accordance with a position of a Z stage and captures an image of interference light while moving a two-beam interference objective lens relative to a paste film in an optical axis direction, detects, as a focus position, a position of the Z stage where the intensity of interference light is highest in a period during which the brightness of white light is set to the first or second level, for each pixel of the captured image, and obtains the height of the paste film based on a detection result.

We describe apparatus for measurement of thickness and topography of slabs of materials employing probes with filters using polarization maintaining fibers.

A thickness measuring apparatus for measuring the thickness of a workpiece held on a chuck table includes the followings: a light source configured to emit white light; an optical branching unit configured to branch, to a second optical path, reflected light applied from the light source to the workpiece held on the chuck table via a first optical path and reflected from the workpiece; a diffraction grating disposed in the second optical path; an image sensor configured to detect an optical intensity signal of light separated into each wavelength by the diffraction grating; and a thickness output unit configured to generate a spectral interference waveform on the basis of the optical intensity signal detected by the image sensor, determine the thickness on the basis of the spectral interference waveform, and output the thickness.

Using data about the geometry of the wafer, the geometry of the wafer is measured along at least three diameters originating at different points along a circumference of the wafer. A characterization of the geometry of the wafer is determined using the three diameters. A probability of wafer clamping failure for the wafer can be determined based on the characterization.