赤外エバネッセント光によるシリコンウエハ加工表面層欠陥検出に関する研究(第1報) : 理論的・実験的検討

概要

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In modern semiconductor manufacturing processes, the design rule will shrink to under 100nm scale. In order to reduce and control yield loss in such a fabrication process of next generation ULSI devices, nano-defects inspection technique for polished Si (Silicon) wafer surface becomes more essential. This paper discusses the new inspection method of nano-defects in the vicinity of Si wafer surface by detecting infrared (IR) evanescent light emerging on the surface. In this method, by using evanescent light based on near field optics for defect detection, it enables to detect nanometre scale defects without diffraction limit to resolution. To verify the feasibility of this proposed method, both of the computer simulations based on Maxwell's equations and the several fundamental experiments are performed. FDTD simulation shows that the proposed method is effective to detect nano-defects existing not only on Si surface but also in the subsurface with high sensitivity. And also the fundamental experiments show the validity of this method by demonstrating nano-defects detections of subsurface as well as surface.
2003-09-05