Product Description

The Teron 600 platform for reticle defect inspection at the 2Xnm logic (3Xnm half-pitch memory) node will feature higher resolution and greater defect capture rates versus the current industry-standard platform, TeraScan™XR, and introduce programmable scanner illumination capability. A flexible, low-noise platform, the Teron 600 is designed for reticles created for ILT/SMO, double-patterning lithography (DPL), as well as EUV masks and blanks. The platform is built to be extendible to future optical reticle generations. Moreover, the Teron 600 Series can work with KLA-Tencor’s TeraScan 500 Series reticle defect inspection systems in a mix-and-match strategy to provide a cost-effective solution for manufacturing critical and non-critical layers in a photomask set.

The new Teron 600 Series reticle defect inspection systems will include several features designed to enable production of advanced optical masks and development of EUV masks, including:

• New 193nm wavelength, smaller pixel, ultra-low noise, and improved image processing to provide traditional high-resolution reticle plane inspection for production of advanced optical reticles, as well as mask process development
• Advanced wafer plane inspection (WPI) for defect printability prediction on the most complex ILT/SMO optical reticles, complete with easy user-configurable scanner illumination profiles, modeling of sub-wavelength diffraction and polarization effects, and photoresist thresholding
• Both die-to-database and die-to-die operating modes, enabling high performance defect capture on a broad range of reticle layouts
• Advanced aerial-plane filtering techniques to eliminate nuisance defects, facilitating early process development and faster cycle time during mask production
• Compatibility with existing TeraScan platform for easy integration and capacity optimization in mask production operations

Applications:

• Photomask process development
• Photomask manufacturing