Project Grant 60NANB26D004

PURPOSE: ACCURATE SEM-BASED OVERLAY AND OTHER DOCUMENTARY STANDARDS COULD EMERGE FROM THIS EFFORT. COMPUTATIONAL SEM IMAGING AND METROLOGY WILL HELP ANY FIELD OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE WHERE SEMS ARE USED. THE INNOVATIVE SEM OVERLAY METROLOGY DEVELOPED BY THIS PROJECT WILL ALLOW THE DESIGN OF SEM AND OPTICAL OVERLAY METROLOGY WAFERS AS STANDARD REFERENCE MATERIALS USEFUL FOR THE IC INDUSTRY. BECAUSE THE COMPUTATIONAL SEM OVERLAY MEASUREMENT CAPABILITIES ARE BASED ON THE PHYSICS OF SIGNAL GENERATION AND DETECTION, THEY WILL APPLY TO ANY SEM-BASED IMAGING AND MEASUREMENT, ESPECIALLY IN THE OPTIMIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF FUTURE IC STRUCTURES, MATERIALS, AND MEASURANDS AND TO THE SEMS THEMSELVES BY IDENTIFYING THE BEST, OPTIMIZED WAYS OF GENERATING AND DETECTING SEM SIGNALS THAT CARRY THE INFORMATION SOUGHT.ACTIVITIES TO BE PERFORMED: 1. ADD OVERLAY STRUCTURE AUTOMATICALLY WITH AN ADDITIONAL OVERLAY GUI IN WHICH THE USER WOULD PROVIDE THE DIMENSIONS, CHOOSE THE OVERLAY STRUCTURE AND THE STRUCTURE WOULD BE CREATED. 2. ADDITIONAL FEATURES TO PERFORM DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS FOR GEOMETRIC FEATURES. IT WOULD BE EFFICIENT TO BE ABLE TO HAVE THE SIMULATION VARY LOCATION AND / OR DIMENSIONS OF FEATURES IN THE OVERLAY PATTERNS AND/THE THICKNESS OF THE DIFFERENT LAYERS TO ACCOMPLISH THE OVERLAY PROJECT GOALS. 3. ADDITIONAL FEATURES OF THE ELECTRON BEAM, ESPECIALLY THE BEAM DIRECTION AND THE ASYMMETRY OF THE BEAM CROSS SECTION. 4. MORE FLEXIBILITY WITH DEFINING THE ELECTRON GUN AND THE ABILITY TO LOOP OVER A RANGE OF BEAM DIRECTIONS. THE SOFTWARE CURRENTLY HAS THE ABILITY TO LOOP OVER SOME IMPORTANT PARAMETERS, SUCH AS BEAM SIZE. 5. ADD ADDITIONAL MATERIALS TO THE SIMUSEM MATERIALS DATABASE, ESPECIALLY OXIDES. 6. ADD FRACTIONAL FACTORIAL DESIGN CAPABILITY SO THAT FEW EXPERIMENTS ARE NEEDED TO OBTAIN THE DESIRED ANALYSIS. 7. ADD ROUGHNESS TO THE SURFACE OF THE OVERLAY STRUCTURES 8. ALLOW DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS WITH GEOMETRIC PARAMETERS, INCLUDING ADDING SOME RANDOM VARIABILITY 9. OPTIMIZING DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING FOR THE NIST COMPUTER CLUSTER EXPECTED OUTCOMES: ADVANCING U.S. LEADERSHIP IN DOCUMENTARY STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT TO STRENGTHEN U.S. GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS IN ADVANCED MICROELECTRONICS MATERIALS, DESIGN, MANUFACTURING, AND PACKAGING. ACCURATE SEM-BASED OVERLAY AND OTHER DOCUMENTARY STANDARDS COULD EMERGE FROM THIS EFFORT. COMPUTATIONAL SEM IMAGING AND METROLOGY WILL HELP ANY FIELD OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE WHERE SEMS ARE USED. DEVELOPING AND DEPLOYING CRITICALLY NEEDED MEASUREMENT SERVICES (REFERENCE MATERIALS, REFERENCE DATA, CALIBRATIONS) TO DRIVE U.S. LEADERSHIP IN MICROELECTRONICS MANUFACTURING AND RELATED TECHNOLOGIES. THE INNOVATIVE SEM OVERLAY METROLOGY DEVELOPED BY THIS PROJECT WILL ALLOW THE DESIGN OF SEM AND OPTICAL OVERLAY METROLOGY WAFERS AS STANDARD REFERENCE MATERIALS USEFUL FOR THE IC INDUSTRY. DEVELOPING AND DEPLOYING INNOVATIVE MANUFACTURING METROLOGIES TO ENABLE THE U.S. INDUSTRY TO INCREASE MANUFACTURING YIELD, IMPROVE PERFORMANCE, AND ACCELERATE TIME TO MARKET FOR NEXT-GENERATION MICROELECTRONICS. BECAUSE THE COMPUTATIONAL SEM OVERLAY MEASUREMENT CAPABILITIES ARE BASED ON THE PHYSICS OF SIGNAL GENERATION AND DETECTION, THEY WILL APPLY TO ANY SEM-BASED IMAGING AND MEASUREMENT, ESPECIALLY IN THE OPTIMIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF FUTURE IC STRUCTURES, MATERIALS, AND MEASURANDS AND TO THE SEMS THEMSELVES BY IDENTIFYING THE BEST, OPTIMIZED WAYS OF GENERATING AND DETECTING SEM SIGNALS THAT CARRY THE INFORMATION SOUGHT.INTENDED BENEFICIARIES: COMPUTATIONAL SEM IMAGING AND METROLOGY WILL HELP ANY FIELD OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE WHERE SEMS ARE USED. THIS PROJECT WILL ALSO BE BENEFICIAL FOR THE IC INDUSTRY.SUBRECIPIENT ACTIVITIES: THE RECIPIENT DOES NOT INTEND TO SUBAWARD FUNDS.