APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR ENHANCED CRITICAL DIMENSION SCATTEROMETRY

摘要

Scatterometers and methods of using scatterometry to determine several parameters of periodic microstructures, pseudo-periodic structures, and other very small structures having features sizes as small as 100 nm or less. Several specific embodiments of the present invention are particularly useful in the semiconductor industry to determine the width, depth, line edge roughness, wall angle, film thickness, and many other parameters of the features formed in microprocessors, memory devices, and other semiconductor devices. The sensitivity of single pixels of the camera on changes in a measured parameter is modelled and only pixels with a high sensitivity are considered for the measurement.