News: Suppliers
19 February 2021
Infinitesima ships first RPM 3D system
Semiconductor equipment developer Infinitesima Ltd of Abingdon Business Park, near Oxford, UK has shipped the first RPM 3D system to jointly develop three-dimensional metrology applications for characterization of state-of-the-art semiconductor devices in collaboration with nanoelectronics research centre imec of Leuven, Belgium.
“Their pioneering work in tomographical semiconductor analytics will prove increasingly important with the increasing focus on 3D integration to continue Moore’s law,” comments Infinitesima’s CEO Peter Jenkins.
The RPM 3D is an enhanced version of the rapid probe microscope (RPM) already applied in mask repair applications. The RPM applies a probe microscopy technique with what are said to be unique technology advantages that enable high-speed data acquisition rates. Photothermal actuation of the probe, combined with an interferometric detection system, enables fast and accurate surface detection.
The RPM 3D has been enhanced to enable automated tomography applications including new characterization modes such as conductivity. These techniques will be applied in the imec collaboration to address increasingly more complex 3D metrology problems of advanced semiconductor processes such as gate-all-around (GAA) transistors.
“The RPM’s unique technology enables us to address the industry drive of migrating lab techniques into the fab to support future semiconductor manufacturing process control,” says Jenkins.
The RPM 3D capability to automatically switch between different probes while retaining sample registration enables much faster cycles of learning in the development of 3D device structures, hence helping to accelerate the introduction of these new processes and, in the future, provide production process control.
In addition to traditional 3D surface measurement of the sample, the system will enable characterization of electrical properties through the depth of structures using C-AFM and other techniques.
Initial results from the collaboration are being presented in a paper by imec and Infinitesima at the SPIE Advanced Lithography 2021 conference (22-26 February).
www.spie.org/conferences-and-exhibitions/advanced-lithography
