Applications of automatic defect classification in photolithography

This paper presents two applications of Automatic Defect Classification (ADC) to monitor and control defect density in photolithography processing. These techniques can also apply to any process module. Many defect types are only generated when the wafer pattern is present while other yield impacting defects are detected only on monitor wafers due to a low signal-to-noise ratio on product wafers. The use of ADC in both cases to find root cause solutions is a powerful tool enabling a quick time to obtain results and reduced yield risk in the manufacture of integrated circuits.