Improved test structures for the electrical measurement of feature size on an alternating aperture phase-shifting mask

Smith, S., Walton, A.J., McCallum, M., Hourd, A.C., Stevenson, J.T.M. and Ross, A.W.S. (2005) Improved test structures for the electrical measurement of feature size on an alternating aperture phase-shifting mask. In Proceedings of the 2005 International Conference on Microelectronic Test Structures, 2005. ICMTS 2005. IEEE. pp. 17-22 .

Abstract

Electrical test structures have been designed that are compatible with a standard alternating aperture, phase-shift mask manufacturing process. Measurements indicate that these have superior performance to previous designs where Greek cross structures suffered from asymmetry problems. As a result, the new test structures extract a consistent, and accurate, sheet resistance. In addition, the measurements on linewidth structures have demonstrated an improved capability with the CD offset variability being reduced to a quarter of the previous value. Electrical CD results from a wide range of test structures, both phase-shifted and binary, are presented and it is demonstrated that the phase-shifting elements have a negligible effect on the measurements. A limited number of atomic force microscope measurements have also been made for comparison purposes.

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