Waferless metrology job creation

Summary form only given, as follows. Discusses waferless job creation, which need not wait for wafer processing and therefore permits elimination of metrology associate delays during new product introduction. At Motorola's MOS-12 facility, implementation of waferless job creation on CD, overlay, and film thickness measurement tools has reduced new product introduction time by 2 days. In addition, because of standardization of metrology structures, there is much greater consistency in measurements across multiple products. The key components for successfully achieving waferless set up of metrology jobs are standardizing metrology in scribe structures, incorporating specialized inscribe pattern recognition features, tightly matching machines, and directly manipulating job plans. By having standard CAD libraries for each type of measurement the coordinates of all measurement features are known. By using optimized in scribe pattern recognition features, target images can be reused on new products. Tight matching of machines permits job plans written on one machine to be copied to all similar machines without modification. Direct manipulation of job plans eliminates the need for a wafer during job creation.