Orji Ndubuisi G, Dixson Ronald G, Lopez Ernesto, Irmer Bernd
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20850, USA.
nanotools USA LLC, Henderson, NV 89052, USA.
J Micro Nanolithogr MEMS MOEMS. 2020;19(1). doi: 10.1117/1.jmm.19.1.014004.
Nanoscale wear affects the performance of atomic force microscopy (AFM)-based measurements for all applications including process control measurements and nanoelectronics characterization. As such, methods to prevent or reduce AFM tip wear is an area of active research. However, most prior work has been on conventional AFMs rather than critical dimension AFM (CD-AFM). Hence, less is known about CD-AFM tip-wear. Given that tip-wear directly affects the accuracy of dimensional measurements, a basic understanding of CD-AFM tip wear is needed. Toward this goal, we evaluated the wear performance of electron beam deposited CD-AFM tips. Using a continuous scanning strategy, we evaluated the overall wear rate and tip lifetime and compared these with those of silicon-based CD-AFM tips. Our data show improved tip lifetime of as much as a factor of five and reduced wear rates of more than 17 times. Such improvements in wear rate means less measurement variability and lower cost.
纳米级磨损会影响基于原子力显微镜（AFM）的测量在包括过程控制测量和纳米电子学表征在内的所有应用中的性能。因此，防止或减少AFM针尖磨损的方法是一个活跃的研究领域。然而，大多数先前的工作是针对传统AFM，而非关键尺寸AFM（CD-AFM）。因此，关于CD-AFM针尖磨损的了解较少。鉴于针尖磨损直接影响尺寸测量的准确性，需要对CD-AFM针尖磨损有基本的认识。为了实现这一目标，我们评估了电子束沉积的CD-AFM针尖的磨损性能。使用连续扫描策略，我们评估了整体磨损率和针尖寿命，并将其与硅基CD-AFM针尖的进行了比较。我们的数据显示，针尖寿命提高了多达五倍，磨损率降低了超过17倍。磨损率的这种改善意味着测量变异性更小，成本更低。
