Method and system for monitoring an etch process

摘要

Etch process monitoring involves performing pre-etch measurements of a substrate to generate pre-etch measurement information, and etching the substrate in an etch reactor using an etch process. The pre-etch measurement information and the etch process monitoring are used to monitor an etch process endpoint. Etch process monitoring involves performing pre-etch measurements of a substrate to generate pre-etch measurement information. The substrate is provided along with the pre-etch measurement information to an etch reactor. It is etched in the etch reactor using an etch process. The pre-etch measurement information in combination with etch process monitoring are used to monitor an etch process endpoint. The etch process is terminated when it reached the etch process endpoint, based on the etch process monitoring. Independent claims are also included for: (1) system for monitoring an etch process comprising reactor(s) to perform an etch process and having etch process measuring module for monitoring an etch process endpoint in the reactor, metrology module(s) to provide pre-etch measurement information to the etch reactor, and substrate robot(s); (2) in-situ metrology tool comprising plasma reactor(s) to perform wafer processing, measurement module(s) coupled to the reactor and for measuring a layer thickness on a substrate and a critical dimension, and plasma state monitoring module(s) coupled to the plasma reactor and for monitoring a plasma state within the plasma reactor; and (3) method of processing data collected by an in-situ metrology tool of a semiconductor wafer processing system comprising examining data representing signal intensity versus time as collected by the in-situ metrology tool, and selecting a time window for performing a Discrete Fourier Transformation on portion(s) of the data.