Effective method to automatically measure the profile parameters of integrated circuit from SEM/TEM/STEM images

An effective image based method to automatically measure the profile parameters (PPs), including the critical dimensions (CDs), the full height and other structural parameters, of the integrated circuit (IC) devices in batch is proposed. In this method, templates are used to indicate the patterns of interest and the regions of the desired PPs; pattern recognition and PPs analysis algorithms are applied to determine the exact PPs from the underdetermined IC device images. In practice, the proposed method was proven of higher efficiency, more accuracy and better repeatability than the traditional manual measurement.