Thickness Measurement of a Transparent Thin Film Using Phase Change in White-Light Phase-Shift Interferometry

Measuring the thickness of thin films is strongly required in the display industry. In recent years, as the size of a pattern has become smaller, the substrate has become larger. Consequently, measuring the thickness of the thin film over a wide area with low spatial sampling size has become a key technique of manufacturing-yield management. Interferometry is a well-known metrology technique that offers low spatial sampling size and the ability to measure a wide area; however, there are some limitations in measuring the thickness of the thin film. This paper proposes a method to calculate the thickness of the thin film in the following two steps: first, pre-estimation of the thickness with the phase at the peak position of the interferogram at the bottom surface of the thin film, using white-light phase-shift interferometry; second, accurate correction of the measurement by fitting the interferogram with the theoretical pattern through the estimated thickness. Feasibility and accuracy of the method has been verified by comparing measured values of photoresist pattern samples, manufactured with the halftone display process, to those measured by AFM. As a result, an area of 880 x 640 pixels could be measured in 3 seconds, with a measurement error of less than 12%.