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Demand for higher efficiency in the semiconductor manufacturing industry is continually increasing. In particular, nano defects measurement on patterned or bare Si semiconductor wafer surfaces is an important quality control factor for realizing high productivity and reliability of semiconductor device fabrication. Optical methods and electron beam methods are conventionally used for the inspection of semiconductor wafers. Because they are nondestructive and suitable for high-throughput inspection, optical methods are preferable to electron beam methods such as scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and so on. However, optical methods generally have an essential disadvantage about lateral spatial resolution than electron beam methods, because of the diffraction limit depending on the optical wavelength. In this research, we aim to develop a novel laser-scanning imaging method that can be applied to nano-/micro manufacturing processes such as semiconductor wafer surface inspection to allow lateral spatial super-resolution imaging with resolution beyond the diffraction limit. In our proposed method, instead of detecting the light intensity value from the beam spot on the inspection surface, the light intensity distribution, which is formed with infinity corrected optical system, coming from the beam spot on the inspection surface is detected. In addition, nano scale shifts in the beam spot are applied for laser spot scanning using a conventional laser-scanning method in which the spots are shifted at about a 100 nm pitch. By detecting multiple light intensity distributions due to the nano scale shifts, a super-resolution image reconstruction with resolution beyond the diffraction limit can be expected. In order to verify the feasibility of the proposed method, several numerical simulations were carried out.

Lateral resolution improvement of laser-scanning imaging for nano defects detection