Abstract. Background: To reduce defocus from leveling errors at the wafer edge, modern exposure tools offer a broad range of advanced leveling controls. These additional degrees of freedom offer better leveling performance, but users hesitate to spend the tool time, wafers, and engineering hours necessary to find and maintain the optimal settings experimentally. Aim: In order to fully explore the potential of advanced leveling controls, an automated, fast simulation method should be introduced. Approach: Alternative set-point curves and resulting focus residuals are simulated from existing wafer height maps. Optimizations are carried out to obtain the best edge exclusion settings for several dynamic random access memory and NAND flash memory products, across different layers and exposure tools. The simulated focus errors are compared to the POR settings and verified with electrical results. Results: An efficient optimization algorithm was demonstrated and significant leveling improvements found for a number of use cases. The resulting settings vary substantially between different products, layers, and exposure tools. The impact of the improved leveling performance is verified using electrical data. Conclusions: The speed of the presented method proves crucial to help lithographers dial in and maintain numerous settings at optimal values across a typical production line.

中文翻译：

---

使用优化的晶圆边缘设置改善焦点调平

摘要。背景：为了减少晶圆边缘的调平误差造成的散焦，现代曝光工具提供了广泛的高级调平控制。这些额外的自由度提供了更好的调平性能，但用户不愿花费必要的工具时间、晶圆和工程时间来通过实验找到和保持最佳设置。目的：为了充分挖掘先进水平控制的潜力，应该引入一种自动化、快速的模拟方法。方法：从现有晶圆高度图模拟替代设定点曲线和产生的焦点残差。进行优化以获得跨不同层和曝光工具的几种动态随机存取存储器和 NAND 闪存产品的最佳边缘排除设置。将模拟的聚焦误差与 POR 设置进行比较，并通过电气结果进行验证。结果：展示了一种有效的优化算法，并在许多用例中发现了显着的平衡改进。结果设置在不同的产品、图层和曝光工具之间存在很大差异。使用电气数据验证了改进的平整性能的影响。结论：所提出的方法的速度被证明对于帮助平版印刷师拨入并在典型生产线上将众多设置保持在最佳值至关重要。和曝光工具。使用电气数据验证了改进的平整性能的影响。结论：所提出的方法的速度被证明对于帮助平版印刷师拨入并在典型生产线上将众多设置保持在最佳值至关重要。和曝光工具。使用电气数据验证了改进的平整性能的影响。结论：所提出的方法的速度被证明对于帮助平版印刷师拨入并在典型生产线上将众多设置保持在最佳值至关重要。