| Kenji Watanabe, Dr. Eng. | Application Technology Center, Research & Development Div., Nanotechnology Products Business Gr., |
| Shunji Maeda, Dr. Eng. | Image Recognition & Inspection Systems Dept., Production Engineering Research Lab., |
| Tomohiro Funakoshi | Application Technology Center, Research & Development Div., Nanotechnology Products Business Gr., |
| Yoko Miyazaki | Development Dept., |
The trend of miniaturization in advanced semiconductor devices is accelerating. Against this background, the performance required of a wafer inspection system extends beyond simply greater sensitivity to include accommodating new materials such as ArF photoresist, Cu wiring, and low-k materials as well as higher throughput for 300-mm wafer production lines. With the aim of developing a system that meets the requirements outlined above, Hitachi-High Technologies Corporation began joint development of the high-performance DUV (deep ultraviolet) optical wafer inspection system with TOKYO SEIMITSU Co., Ltd. in 2003. That system is now on the market. By employing DUV light, which has a shorter wavelength than the conventionally used white light and UV (ultraviolet) light, as the light source, this system makes use of the more intense illumination to attain a smaller inspection pixel size and higher detection sensitivity. It furthermore achieves a throughput that is several times higher than that of conventional systems by employing one of the world's fastest image processing devices. This system is thus able to cope with nodes of 65 nm and smaller.
wafer inspection, defect inspection, bright field, optical inspection, DUV laser
