Investigations of the influence of common approximations in scatterometry for dimensional nanometrology

Scatterometry is a common tool for the dimensional characterization of periodic nanostructures. It is an indirect measurement method, where the dimensions and geometry of the structures under test are reconstructed from the measured scatterograms applying inverse rigorous calculations. This approach is numerically very elaborate so that usually a number of approximations are used. The influence of each approximation has to be analysed to quantify its contribution to the uncertainty budget. This is a fundamental step to achieve traceability. In this paper, we experimentally investigate two common approximations: the effect of a finite illumination spot size and the application of a more advanced structure model for the reconstruction. We show that the illumination spot size affects the sensitivity to sample inhomogeneities but has no influence on the reconstruction parameters, whereas additional corner rounding of the trapezoidal grating profile significantly improves the reconstruction result. (paper)