System for automated focus measuring of a lithography tool

Photocopying – Projection printing and copying cameras – Focus or magnification control

Reexamination Certificate

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

C355S053000, C355S061000

Reexamination Certificate

active

07081948

ABSTRACT:
A system and method are used to calibrate a focus portion of an exposure section of a lithography tool. A wafer is exposed so that a resulted or formed patterned image is tilted with respect to the wafer. The tilting can be imposed based on controlling a wafer stage to tilt the wafer or a reticle stage to tilt the reticle. The wafer is developed. Characteristics of the tilted patterned image are measured with a portion of the lithography tool to determine focus parameters of an exposure system. The portion can be an alignment system. The measuring step can measure band width and/or band location of the tilted patterned image. Sometimes, more than one patterned image is formed on the wafer, then the measuring step can measure distance between bands and shifting of the bands with respect to a central axis of the wafer. The focus parameters can be focus tilt errors and/or focus offset. The focus parameters are used to perform calibration. Calibration is done by either automatically or manually entering compensation values for the measured focus parameters into the lithography tool.

REFERENCES:
patent: 4326805 (1982-04-01), Feldman et al.
patent: 4786166 (1988-11-01), Kroko
patent: 5898479 (1999-04-01), Hubbard et al.
patent: 5991004 (1999-11-01), Wallace et al.
patent: 6236477 (2001-05-01), Ishihara et al.
patent: 6278515 (2001-08-01), Knight et al.
patent: 6501532 (2002-12-01), Suzuki
patent: 6529263 (2003-03-01), Oguri et al.
patent: 6600166 (2003-07-01), Sato et al.
patent: 6885429 (2005-04-01), Lyons et al.
patent: 2002/0021460 (2002-02-01), Hansen
patent: 2003/0002021 (2003-01-01), Sato
patent: 2004/0001192 (2004-01-01), Lyons et al.
patent: 2004/0165194 (2004-08-01), Hansen
patent: 10-0200729 (1999-03-01), None
English Abstract for Japanese Patent Publication No. 2000357656 A, published Dec. 26, 2000, 1 page.
Search Report from Singapore Patent Application No. 200303720-7, dated Jan. 29, 2004, 7 pages.
Written Opinion, from Singapore Patent Application No. 200303720-7, dated Apr. 8, 2005, 10 pages.
Written Opinion for Singapore Application No. 05251081.5 mailed on Oct. 11, 2005, 10 pages.

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for the USA inventors and patents. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

System for automated focus measuring of a lithography tool does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.

If you have personal experience with System for automated focus measuring of a lithography tool, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and System for automated focus measuring of a lithography tool will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3587537

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.