DEFINITION OF LINE EDGE ROUGH-NESS

BASED ON METROLOGY

ZHAO Xuezeng LI Hongbo CHU Wei XIAO Zengwen LI Ning

(School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001)

Abstract: The current study status of line edge roughness (LER) is analyzed, which indicates LER itself has already been used to refer to many properties including line width uniformity, roughness of line edge and sidewall roughness. And the different meaning of LER is explained. A new definition of LER is brought forward, i.e, LER is the microcosmic roughness of the sidewall topography, which is caused by processing and the character of materials measured. At the same time, explain the definition relation with it from ITRS and also analysis this definition rationality. According to the process which is mainly on the edge surface and dimension is in nanometer field, a mathematics model to calculate LER is shown in atomic dimension. In this model, the roughness from the material intrinsical char-acter is separated.

Key words: Nano-measurement Critical dimension Line edge roughness Intrinsical material roughness Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) Atomic force microscope (AFM)

CLC No: TG84 TH161 TB92

2003年教育部留学回国人员科研启动基金和哈尔滨工业大学校基金(HIT.2002.28)资助项目. Received 20060120,  received in revised form 20060922