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    Novel near-field optical probe for 100-nm critical dimension measurements

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    Although the theoretical resolution for a conventional optical microscope is about 300 nm, it is normally difficult to obtain satisfactory critical dimension (CD) measurements below about 600 nm. E-beam technology has been popular for sub-500 nm metrology but also has well known limitations. Scanning probe and near-field optical methods have high spatial resolution. Yet they are ill-suited for routine CD metrology of high aspect ratio features because of a combination of short working distances (< 10 nm) and large tips. In this paper the authors present the concept and initial modeling results for a novel near-field optical probe that has the potential of overcoming these limitations. The idea is to observe resonance shifts in a waveguide cavity that arise from the coupling of the evanescent field of the waveguide to perturbations beneath the waveguide plane. The change in resonance frequency is detected as a change in the transmission of a monochromatic probe beam through the waveguide. The transmitted intensity, together with the appropriate signal processing, gives the topography of the perturbation. The model predicts that this probe is capable of determining the width of photoresist lines as small as 100 nm. The working distance is much more practical than other probe techniques at about 100 to 250 nm

    Theoretical Analysis of the Sensitivity and Speed Improvement of ISIS over a Comparable Traditional Hyperspectral Imager

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    The analysis presented herein predicts that, under signal-independent noise limited conditions, an Information-efficient Spectral Imaging Sensor (ISIS) style hyperspectral imaging system design can obtain significant signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and speed increase relative to a comparable traditional hyperspectral imaging (HSI) instrument. Factors of forty are reasonable for a single vector, and factors of eight are reasonable for a five-vector measurement. These advantages can be traded with other system parameters in an overall sensor system design to allow a variety of applications to be done that otherwise would be impossible within the constraints of the traditional HSI style design

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