Dr. Peter Kraus, has been awarded an ERC Proof of Concept grant for the EUVISION project, which will develop a new metrology technique using high-harmonic generation-driven extreme ultraviolet (EUV) scatterometry.
This EUVISION project aims to demonstrate this as a fast, non-invasive, three-dimensional technique that can measure modern chip features at high resolution.
Modern nanolithography can produce computer chips with features well below 20 nanometers, but current methods for assessing print quality face a measurement gap: non-invasive optical techniques do not reach this resolution, while higher-resolution methods such as electron microscopy are more invasive and may alter the material or its alignment. As critical dimensions continue to shrink, the ability to measure chip structures in three dimensions becomes increasingly important.
Dr. Peter Kraus is associate professor in the Physics of Nanolithography department. EUVISION builds on recent work by PhD candidate Francesco Corazza and Dr. Manos Kechaoglou in Kraus’s High-Harmonic Generation & EUV Science - ARCNL group at ARCNL. The group demonstrated a fast, non-invasive 3D scatterometry approach using EUV light and only the zeroth diffraction order, published in Nature Communications. The project will extend EUV scatterometry beyond the zeroth order to access more structural information while maintaining speed, advance reconstruction algorithms, and explore applications for semiconductor-relevant materials and atomically thin systems where small defects can have a major impact on device performance.