For the past 50 years the semiconductor industry has marched at the pace of Moore’s Law: doubling the computing power of a chip every two years whereas simultaneously chips have become cheaper to manufacture. To achieve new functionalities and to make optimum use of the available wafer space, IC devices will shrink to atomic scale dimensions using novel, complex designs, energy-sensitive and opaque materials, 3D structures and multiple stacked features. This leads to several new challenges in process control metrology as the chip features now will need non-destructive characterization in 3D at high throughput, even on the device level.

Nearfield Instruments’ High Throughput Scanning Probe Metrology system (HT-SPM) enables direct measurement of process control parameters that are either very hard to measure with other techniques or only in a destructive manner or at very low throughput. Specifically measuring the 3D shape of high-aspect ratio features at angstrom level precision with substantial increase in throughput is enabled by Nearfield Instruments’ first product. Moreover, Nearfield Instruments’ patented revolutionary metrology architecture can solve major next-generation metrology challenges introduced by the change from 2D to 3D chip features, which lead to very high aspect ratio multilayered structures, wafer stress driven bow and vertical gate dimension control issues. Nearfield Instruments’ area of focus is semiconductor wafer fabs and includes both Process Window Discovery and Process Window Expansion & Control.