Chromatic confocal scanning apparatus

Abstract

A chromatic confocal scanning apparatus comprises a light source for producing light rays comprising a plurality of wavelengths, a first screen having an open elongated slit which allows a strip of light rays produced from the light source to pass through the slit and a cylindrical objective lens both to converge the light rays onto an object surface that is to be measured, and to image light rays reflected from the object surface. An intermediate cylindrical lens set converges a strip of light rays imaged from the cylindrical objective lens to pass through an open elongated slit comprised in a second screen, and a color sensor receives light rays which have passed through the slit of the second screen for determining a plurality of wavelengths of the said strip of light rays, to thereby construct a height profile of at least a portion of the object surface.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The invention relates to an apparatus for inspecting a surface of an object, and in particular for determining a height profile of the surface.BACKGROUND AND PRIOR ART [0002]Over the past few decades, demand for semiconductor devices has grown rapidly. Semiconductor manufacturers are often pressured into improvements in end-product quality, speed and performance, as well as improvements in manufacturing process quality, speed and performance. Machine vision has proven to be a very essential part of improving the productivity and quality of semiconductor production. There is a consistent drive for faster and more accurate machine vision systems for ever-higher semiconductor yields. Many high-density semiconductor packaging inspection applications require three-dimensional measurement capability. Correspondingly, the technical field of three-dimensional measurement and inspection for semiconductor devices, such as semiconductor wafers or substrates on final...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention aims to provide a device that can scan the surface of an object with a wider field of view, more efficient energy usage, and more accurate measurements based on a slit. These improvements make it better than previous devices.

Problems solved by technology

However, the triangulation setup is vulnerable to occlusion and shadows.

Moreover, due to the measurement range required by semiconductor packages like Ball Grid Array (BGA) packages, its pixel / spot resolution is typically poorer than 10 μm.

As such, there is insufficient optical resolution due to the required measurement range.

Unfortunately, the aforesaid chromatic confocal sensor can only inspect one single dot on the object surface at any one time.

As such, measurement of the whole of a three-dimensional surface is very time consuming and far from the high throughput required by the semiconductor industry.

Yet, owing to manufacturing difficulty, the Field of View (FOV) of commercial microscope objective lenses is very limited, especially those with large N.A.. Therefore the inspection speed is also limited.

Furthermore, the N.A. of a circular objective lens is symmetrical and thus any out-of-focus light emerging from the slit which is projected on the object cannot be suppressed as in a conventional spot-scan confocal system.

Therefore, this will greatly affect the measurement accuracy.

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