In situ aberration measurement method using a phase-shift ring mask

Abstract. An in situ aberration measurement method using a phase-shift ring mask is proposed for a lithographic projection lens whose numerical aperture is below 0.8. In this method, two-dimensional phase-shift rings are designed as the measurement mask. A linear relationship model between the intensity distribution of the lateral aerial image and the aberrations is built by principal component analysis and multivariate linear regression analyses. Compared with the principal component analysis of the aerial images (AMAI-PCA) method, in which a binary mask and through-focus aerial images are used for aberration extraction, the aerial images of the phase-shift ring mask contain more useful information, providing the possibility to eliminate the crosstalk between different kinds of aberrations. Therefore, the accuracy of the aberration measurement is improved. Simulations with the lithography simulator Dr.LiTHO showed that the accuracy is improved by 15% and five more Zernike aberrations can be measured compared with the standard AMAI-PCA. Moreover, the proposed method requires less measured aerial images and is faster than the AMAI-PCA.

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