Trefoil aberration measurement of lithographic projection optics based on linewidth asymmetry of the aerial image

The degradation of critical dimension uniformity caused by trefoil aberration of lithographic projection optics is a serious problem in the production of dynamic random access memory devices. In the present paper, we propose a novel method for measuring the trefoil aberration of lithographic projection optics. The trefoil aberration can be extracted from the linewidth asymmetry of the aerial image of brick-wall patterns. The present method has an advantage of timesaving. The test mark used in the present method is easy and cheap to fabricate, and the model for aberration extraction is simple. The PROLITH simulation results show that the trefoil aberration can be measured with high accuracy.