Aerial image based metrology of EUV masks: recent achievements, status, and outlook for the AIMS EUV platform

For upcoming EUV high volume manufacturing, the EUV mask infrastructure plays a central role for its successful introduction. One of the key items in the EUV mask infrastructure is the need of manufacturing defect free photomasks for which an actinic mask review capability is a critical success factor. ZEISS and the SUNY POLY SEMATECH EUVL Mask Infrastructure consortium have developed and commercialized the EUV aerial image metrology system, the AIMS™ EUV. In this paper we present the latest achievements of this AIMS™ EUV platform together with data and analysis of LER/LWR measurements in the aerial image. We provide an overall project overview and discuss possible future extensions options based on this actinic metrology platform.