Phase Defect Analysis With Actinic Full-Field Euvl Mask Blank Inspection

We had developed an actinic full-field inspection system to detect multilayer phase-defects with dark field imaging. Regarding the actinic inspection of native defects, the influence of the defect's surface dimension and multilayer structure, on the intensity-signal obtained from the inspection was analyzed. Three mask blanks were inspected from which 55 defects, observed with AFM and SEM, were classified as amplitude-defects or phase-defects. The surface dimensions and SEVDs (sphere equivalent volume diameters) of the defects were measured with the AFM. In the case where their SEVDs were same as of the programmed phase-defects, they were found to produce stronger intensity-signals in comparison to the ones from the programmed phase-defects. Cross-sectional multilayer structures of two native phase-defects were observed with TEM, and those defects formed non-conformal structures in the multilayer. This result means that most of the native phase-defects tend to form a non-conformal structure, and can make large impact on the wafer image in comparison to the ones from a conformal structure. Besides phase-defects, the actinic inspection also detected amplitude-defects. Although the sensitivities of the amplitude-defects were found to be lower than those of the phase-defects, an amplitude-defect higher than 30 nm could be detected with high probability.