Overview

With tighter wafer-to-wafer and within-wafer uniformity tolerances, integrated metrology systems are in use across various semiconductor processing steps. Based on demonstrated high-resolution optical technology, the IMPULSE V system provides higher sensitivity to thin film residue measurements during the CMP process. This next generation IMPULSE V system extends this reliability at a significantly higher throughput, staying in sync with the need for higher sampling, in-die / on-device and wafer edge measurements. The advanced optics and specifically designed measurement chamber offer a significant improvement in signal to noise ratio (SNR), achieving a >2X improvement in precision over the previous generation of integrated metrology. On-board machine learning uses the additional SNR to complete this powerful package, enabling a faster time-to-solution as well as closing the gap on layers that were previously unmeasurable by the existing toolset.