The limits of CD metrology

One of the many technology decisions facing the semiconductor industry for the 32 nm node (and beyond) is the selection of the best critical dimension (CD) metrology equipment to meet the needs of process equipment suppliers and semiconductor manufacturers. Over the past three years Intel® has fabricated a variety of test structures and performed a number of technology evaluations aimed at determining the limits of today’s CD metrology. In this paper, we discuss the capability of those technologies to measure structures having dimensions representative of the 45, 32, and 22 nm node.