February 22, 2001–San Jose, California–KLA-Tencor Corp. today introduced the Archer 10, the latest in its suite of optical metrology overlay tools. Incorporating several significant improvements in automation, throughput, productivity, and precision over previous generation systems, the Archer 10 is one of the industry’s most competitive cost-of-ownership overlay solutions for 300mm manufacturing at the sub-0.13-micron node.
“Samsung Corp. has selected KLA-Tencor’s new Archer 10 overlay metrology tool due to its superior throughput and precision,” says Dr. Park Choon, senior manager, PE Manufacturing Tech 1 Group Photo at Samsung’s Fab 1 location in Keihung, Korea. “We believe that this product will help us meet our 0.13-micron product ramp goals.”
As design rules approach 0.10-micron, overlay control becomes increasingly difficult to manage–driving the need for overlay metrology tools with extreme precision and accuracy. The use of extension techniques such as optical proximity correction and phase shifting, as well as processes such as chemical mechanical planarization, exacerbate this need as they can distort overlay targets, thereby making accurate overlay measurements difficult to obtain. In addition, the concurrent move to the larger 300mm wafer size is driving semiconductor equipment manufacturers to develop products with significant reductions in cost of ownership to reduce the costs of equipping 300mm fabs.
“Extreme accuracy is a fundamental requirement in overlay metrology tools to maintain tight control of the lithography process,” explains Scott Ashkenaz, vice president of strategic marketing for KLA-Tencor’s Lithography Module Solutions Group. “With a dominant share of the optical metrology market, we’ve leveraged our resultant expertise to design the Archer 10, the latest addition to KLA-Tencor’s Litho PMC solution. The Archer 10 provides the increased precision and accuracy that lithography process engineers need in order to control their overlay error budget for sub-0.13-micron device production.”
Designed for both current and future requirements, the Archer 10 features coherence probe metrology (CPM), which takes 3-D measurements of overlay targets, as compared to the 2-D measurements taken by other overlay metrology systems. The Archer 10 also incorporates new Adaptive Noise Reduction Algorithm (ANRA) focus methods, which enable overlay measurements over low contrast targets. Along with improved optic lenses, these enhancements provide up to a 30% increase in precision to within 2-nm.
KLA-Tencor will offer an upgrade package to the Archer 10 for its 5300 overlay tools by the second calendar quarter of 2001. Production shipments of the Archer 10 are expected to begin in the second calendar quarter of 2001. The Archer 10 will be demonstrated in KLA-Tencor?s booth, #848, at the SPIE Microlithography 2001 conference in the Santa Clara Convention Center on Feb. 27 and 28.