Detection of Sub-Design Rule Shorts for Process Development in Advanced Technology Nodes

Electric shorts down to atomic scale have emerged as the most critical yield detractors in advanced technology process development. In this paper, we demonstrate successful detection by various charging dynamic effects which stem from the transistor level response under electron beam exposure. We found that charging dynamic effects coupled with photon or scan direction are exceptionally useful for critical voltage contrast defect detection. Correlation with other characterization methods on the same defective location from electron beam inspection scan shows consistent results for various shorting mechanisms.