Characteristics of UV confocal microscopy inspection for detecting 0.1 /spl mu/m level defects

Due to shrinkage of design rule, optical in-line defect inspection with white-light source is reaching its detection limit. To overcome the limitation, a defect inspection system using UV confocal microscopy was recently introduced. In this paper, we investigated characteristics of UV confocal microscopy, which is confocal microscopy using UV light source, by analyzing TDI images captured by a defect inspection system with UV confocal microscopy. The results of this study showed that UV confocal microscopy has higher sensitivity and is more efficient for detection of 0.1 /spl mu/m-level small defects rather than white-light source or conventional microscopy.