38results about "Investigating semiconductor impurities" patented technology

A method is disclosed evaluating a silicon layer crystallized by irradiation with pulses form an excimer-laser. The crystallization produces periodic features on the crystalized layer dependent on the number of and energy density in the pulses to which the layer has been exposed. An area of the layer is illuminated with light. A detector is arranged to detect light diffracted from the illuminated area and to determine from the detected diffracted light the energy density in the pulses to which the layer has been exposed.

A non-destructive approach for the 3D localization of buried hot spots in electronic device architectures by use of Lock-in Thermography (LIT). The 3D analysis is based on the principles of thermal wave propagation through different material layers and the resulting phase shift/thermal time delay. With more complex multi level stacked die architectures it is necessary to acquire multiple LIT results at different excitation frequencies for precise hot spot depth localization. Additionally, the use of multiple time-resolved thermal waveforms, measured in a minimized field of view on top of the hot spot location, can be used to speed up the data acquisition. The shape of the resulting waveforms can be analyzed to further increase the detection accuracy and confidence level.

A method is disclosed evaluating a silicon layer crystallized by irradiation with pulses form an excimer-laser. The crystallization produces periodic features on the crystalized layer dependent on the number of and energy density ED in the pulses to which the layer has been exposed. An area of the layer is illuminated with light. A microscope image of the illuminated area is made from light diffracted from the illuminated are by the periodic features. The microscope image includes corresponding periodic features. The ED is determined from a measure of the contrast of the periodic features in the microscope image.

A film quality inspecting method comprising applying a measuring beam having a specific wavelength to an annealed silicon film formed on a substrate in a direction inclined with respect to the silicon film, measuring a reflection intensity or reflectivity of a reflection beam reflected by the silicon film as a result of the application, and inspecting a film quality of the silicon film based on a measurement value obtained by the measurement.

The invention provides a method for identifying a silicate phase in vanadium-titanium sintered ore, and relates to the technical field of phase identification. According to the method, vanadium-titanium ore is pretreated and is then finely polished, so that a sheet sample is prepared; the phase in the sintered ore can be uniformly, conveniently, efficiently and accurately identified by identifyingthe color and crystal form of the sheet sample and measuring the contents of all elements of the silicate phase, so that the reliability of the measured data is ensured; after the types and structures of the main metal minerals in the vanadium-titanium sintered ore are figured out, a technical support is provided for the later evaluation of the metallurgical properties of the vanadium-titanium sintered ore, so that sintering and blast furnace production can be adjusted according to the composition, structure and embedding characteristics of the phase in the sintered ore as well as the metallurgical properties of the vanadium-titanium sintered ore; therefore, the method has important theoretical guiding significance for reducing solid fuel consumption, improving sintered ore strength and reducing blast furnace comprehensive coke ratio, and can be applied to inspection and research institutes of various laboratories and production sites.

Described herein is a method for delineating crystalline defects in a thin Si layer over a SiGe alloy layer. The method uses a defect etchant with a high-defect selectivity in Si. The Si is etched downed to a thickness that allows the defect pits to reach the underlying SiGe layer. A second etchant, which can be the same or different from the defect etchant, is then used which attacks the SiGe layer under the pits while leaving Si intact.

Embodiments of the present invention provide an improved method and system for assessing non-uniformity of features in the measurement area (within the beam spot) on a semiconductor structure, (e.g. wafer), such as a non-uniform film thickness. The scattering from non-uniform features is modeled. Post-processing the residual of theoretical and collected spectra is performed to assess a measure of non-uniformity from within an incident spot beam of a spectrum acquisition tool.

A metrology system includes an illumination source configured to generate an illumination beam, one or more illumination optics configured to direct the illumination beam to a sample, one or more collection optics configured to collect illumination emanating from the sample, a detector, and a hyperspectral imaging sub-system. The hyperspectral imaging sub-system includes a dispersive element positioned at a pupil plane of the set of collection optics configured to spectrally disperse the collected illumination, a lens array including an array of focusing elements, and one or more imaging optics. The one or more imaging optics combine the spectrally-dispersed collected illumination to form an image of the pupil plane on the lens array. The focusing elements of the lens array distribute thecollected illumination on the detector in an arrayed pattern.

The invention provides a silicon rod crystal line growth state detection method, device and equipment, and relates to the technical field of monocrystalline silicon, and the method comprises the steps: obtaining a sample image of a silicon rod in an equal-diameter growth process of the silicon rod; setting a detection area on the sample image, wherein the detection area is overlapped with the crystal line growth line of the silicon rod; generating a gray value curve of the detection area; and determining the growth state of the crystal line of the silicon rod on the crystal line growth line according to the gray value curve of the detection area. According to the method, the sample image of the silicon rod in the growth process is collected in real time, the detection area is arranged on the sample image, and the growth state of the crystal line of the silicon rod can be determined according to the gray value curve of the detection area so that whether the silicon rod is a monocrystalline silicon rod or not is judged; by adopting the method, the influence of the fluctuation of the diameter of the silicon rod and the unobvious characteristics of the crystal wire on the detection process of the crystal wire is reduced so that the detection precision and the detection efficiency of the crystal wire are improved, and the operation is simple.

An overlay metrology system includes an overlay metrology tool configurable to generate overlay signals with a plurality of recipes and further directs an illumination beam to an overlay target and collects radiation emanating from the overlay target in response to the at least a portion of the illumination beam to generate the overlay signal with the particular recipe. The overlay metrology system further acquires two or more overlay signals for a first overlay target using two or more unique recipes, subsequently acquires two or more overlay signals for a second overlay target using the twoor more unique recipes, determines candidate overlays for the first and second overlay targets based on the two or more overlay signals for each target, and determines output overlays for the first and second overlay targets based on the two or more candidate overlays for each target.

An evaluation method of a SiC epitaxial wafer includes: a first observation step of preparing a SiC epitaxial wafer having a high-concentration epitaxial layer having an impurity concentration of 1×10¹⁸ cm⁻³ or more, irradiating a surface of the high-concentration epitaxial layer having an impurity concentration of 1×10¹⁸ cm⁻³ or more with excitation light, and observing a surface irradiated with the excitation light via a band-pass filter having a wavelength band of 430 nm or less.

A method of identifying a wafer defect region is disclosed. The method includes preparing a sample wafer, forming a primary oxide film on the sample wafer at a temperature of 800° C. to 1000° C., forming a secondary oxide film on the primary oxide film at a temperature of 1000° C. to 1100° C., forming a tertiary oxide film on the secondary oxide film at a temperature of 1100° C. to 1200° C., removing the primary to tertiary oxide films, etching one surface of the sample wafer from which the primary to tertiary oxide films are removed to form haze on one surface of the sample wafer, and identifying a defect region of the sample wafer based on the haze.

A method of evaluating an insulated-gate semiconductor device having an insulated-gate structure including a channel formation layer made of a wide-bandgap semiconductor and a gate insulating film formed contacting the channel formation layer includes removing the gate insulating film in order to expose a surface of the channel formation layer; taking a phase image of the exposed surface of the channel formation layer using a phase mode of an atomic force microscope; evaluating a surface condition of the exposed surface of the channel formation layer by calculating an evaluation metric from phase shift values in the phase image and by determining whether the evaluation metric satisfies a prescribed condition; and determining that the insulated-gate semiconductor device is acceptable when the evaluation metric satisfied the prescribed condition.

A method for inspecting a surface of a wafer, includes steps of: irradiating a surface of the wafer with a laser beam having three or more distinct wavelengths; detecting a reflected light from the surface of the wafer when the surface of the wafer is irradiated with the laser beam; and determining whether a foreign matter exists on the surface of the wafer based on reflectances of the surface of the wafer with respect to the laser beam having the three or more distinct wavelengths, wherein the step of determining whether the foreign matter exists includes a step of determining whether the foreign matter is a metal or a non-metal.

Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) can be used to interrogate a surface such as a surface of a layered semiconductor structure on a semiconductor wafer. In some instances, SHG is used to evaluate an interfacial region such as between metal and oxide. Various parameters such as input polarization, output polarization, and azimuthal angle of incident beam, may affect the SHG signal. Accordingly, such parameters are varied for different types of patterns on the wafer. SHG metrology on various test structures may also assist in characterizing a sample.

A dark field inspection system may include an illumination source to generate an illumination beam; one or more illumination optics to direct the illumination beam to a sample at an off-axis angle along an illumination direction; a detector; one or more collection optics to generate a dark-field image of the sample on the detector based on light collected from the sample in response to the illumination beam; and a radial polarizer located at a pupil plane of the one or more collection optics, where the radial polarizer rejects light with radial polarization with respect to a reference point in the pupil plane corresponding to specular reflection of the illumination beam from the sample.

The invention provides a method for detecting back-surface soft damage density of a silicon wafer. The method comprises the following steps of S1, thermal-oxidization processing; S2, corrosion, in which the silicon wafer obtained in the step S1 is placed in hydrofluoric acid for immersion; S3, dying, in which a chromium oxide solution is prepared, the silicon wafer obtained in the step S2 is immersed in the prepared chromium oxide solution for reaction; S4, washing with clean water; and S5, calculation. Fault is induced to be generated by thermal oxidization, an oxide layer is removed by corrosion, the fault is dyed by the chromium oxide solution, the fault occurring in an ultramicro damage layer is intuitively displayed under microscope, the method has the advantages of stability, reliability, high efficiency and convenience, a technical department can be helped to optimize a sand-blasting process or a special sand-blasting process is selected according to a client demand, daily production of a product also can be monitored, and the product quality is ensured.