A bottom-up approach for traceable nano dimensional metrology

Published

May 29, 2017

Author(s)

Gaoliang Dai, Jens Fluegge, Harald Bosse, Ronald G. Dixson

Abstract

This paper presents a bottom-up approach which uses the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and the reference value of the crystal silicon lattice constant as a pathway for traceability to the SI metre for applications in dimensional nanometrology. Compared to the traditional traceability approach based on optical interferometry, this bottom-up approach offers several important advantages: the atom spacing is much shorter than the optical wavelength, offering higher measurement resolution; it avoids a significant error source ̶ the inherent nonlinearity error of optical interferometry; and more importantly its measurement results suffer much less from the probe-sample interaction for feature width metrology thanks to the true atomic resolution power of TEM. The bottom-up approach has been realised for the feature width metrology of nanostructures both at PTB and NIST. More recently, a comparison on a crystal silicon line width standard, referred to as the IVPS100-PTB, has been performed between two institutes. Excellent agreement has been achieved, which confirms the feasibility of applying the proposed bottom-up approach for traceable dimensional nanometrology.

Conference Dates

May 29-June 2, 2017

Conference Location

Hannover, DE

Conference Title

Euspen - 17th International Conference and Exhibition

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

dimensional nanometrology, traceability, crystal silicon lattice, feature width, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM)

Citation

Dai, G. , Fluegge, J. , Bosse, H. and Dixson, R. (2017), A bottom-up approach for traceable nano dimensional metrology, Euspen - 17th International Conference and Exhibition, Hannover, DE, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=922690 (Accessed October 9, 2025)