| Abstract: |
Staff of the Semiconductor Electronics Division, the Information Technology Laboratory, and the Precision Engineering Laboratory at NIST, in collaboration with VLSI Standards, Inc., of San Jose, California, have developed a new generation of prototype Single-Crystal CD Reference Materials for calibrating CD-metrology instruments that are used in semiconductor manufacturing. The reference material is configured as a 9-mm x 11-mm silicon test-structure chip that is mounted in a 200-mm silicon carrier wafer. The fabrication of both the chip itself and the carrier wafer use the type of lattice-plane-selective etching that is commonly employed in MEMS fabrication. The certified CDs of the reference features are determined from AFM-CD measurements that are referenced to high-resolution transmission-electron microscopy images that reveal the cross-section counts of lattice planes having a pitch that is traceable to the SI meter. |
