Metrology for Nanofabrication (NIMSA Seminar)

A user guide on LNF and EMAL metrology tools.

IC metrology is necessary for assessing the performance of fabrication steps in the semiconductor industry. It is an essential tool for yield enhancement and process control. IC metrology is a billion dollar industry. Metrology can be performed in-situ, for process monitoring, or ex-situ after each fabrication step. It is done at the clean room level, wafer level, device level, and even smaller scales for nanoscale semiconductor devices. Metrology can be used to measure the physical dimensions of a device, to measure the chemical composition or do other materials analysis, or to test device functionality.

The University of Michigan's EMAL contains a wide range of instrumentation for chemical, structural and morphological analysis at the nanoscale. This presentation will highlight a number of the techniques available to users of EMAL by focussing on a number of example projects that involved EMAL instrumentation. Techniques to be discussed will include TEM, STEM, SEM, FIB, XEDS, EELS, XPS and AFM. If the preceding sentence is merely alphabet soup to you, stop by and learn what the acronyms mean about how these techniques may aid in your own research.

Pilar Herrera-Fierro received her BS and MSc in Chemical Engineering from Universidad de Concepcion, Chile. A MSc. In Electrochemistry from Universidad of Santiago. Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University, OH. Won NRC Fellowship and worked in NASA (Lewis Research Center then) for seven years in the Surface Science and Tribology Branch. Moved to Michigan, worked in industry in Surface Science, thin film deposition for solar applications and in semiconductor fabrication. Has been at LNF since 2007 working in CMP, AFM, electro-deposition and metrology.

John Mansfield originally hails from the Midlands in England. In 1987, he joined the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan as manager of the University's Electron Microbeam Analysis Laboratory. Under his management, the laboratory has grown from principally a transmission electron microscopy (TEM) facility to a large interdisciplinary user facility that houses three TEMs, four scanning electron microscopes, of which two are focussed ion beam workstations, an X-ray photoelectron spectrometer, a scanning probe microscope and an atomprobe tomography microscope. Mansfield's research interests include energy loss spectroscopy of plasmonic structures in nanoparticulates; remote control and operation of electron microscope systems for research and teaching; applications of microscopy and microanalysis to cultural heritage research, conservation and restoration; and simulation of convergent beam electron diffraction patterns to study low defect densities in materials.