E-beam inspection for combination use of defect detection and CD measurement

This paper proposes a combination use of e-beam inspection (EBI) for defect detection and CD Uniformity (CDU) measurement. The experiments are based on 14nm FinFET device manufactured on SOI substrate. A 5nm pixel size is utilized to perform hot spot inspection on SRAM pattern and N/P FET pattern after gate etching, spacer formation, and SiGe epitaxy process respectively. CDU measurement results match well with process split in gate etching and spacer formation process. Protrusion defect is detected after SiGe epitaxy process, and a dependency between protrusion defects with the thickness of spacer is found.