Interferometric measurement system for cost effective e-beam writer

The reliability of nanometer track writing in the large scale chip manufacturing process depends mainly on a precise positioning of the e-beam writer moving stage. The laser interferometers are usually employed to control this positioning, but their complicated optical scheme leads to an expensive instrument which increases the e-beam writer's manufacturing costs. We present a new design of an interferometric system useful in a currently developed cost effective e-beam writers. Our approach simplifies the optical scheme of known industrial interferometers and shifts the interference phase detection complexity from optical domain to the digital signal processing part. Besides the effective cost, the low number of optical components minimizes the total uncertainty of this measuring instrument. The scheme consists of a single wavelength DFB laser working at 1530 nm, one beam splitter, measuring and reference reflectors and one photo-detector at the interferometer output. The DFB laser is frequency modulated by slight changes of injection current while the interference intensity signal is processed synchronously. Our algorithm quantifies the phase as two sinusoidal waveforms with a phase offset equal to the quarter of the DFB laser wavelength. Besides the computation of these quadrature signals, the scale linearization techniques are used for an additional suppression of optical setup imperfections, noise and the residual amplitude modulation caused by the laser modulation. The stage position is calculated on basis of the DFB laser wavelength and the processed interference phase. To validate the precision and accuracy we have carried out a pilot experimental comparison with a reference interferometer over the 100 mm measurement range. The first tests promise only ±2 nm deviation between simplified and the reference interferometer.

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