Vector simulations of dark beam interaction with nano-scale surface features

A. Tavrov* a, N. Kerwien a, R. Berger a and H. Tiziani a, M. Totzeck b, B. Spektor c and J. Shamir c, G. Toker d and A. Brunfeld d
a

Institut fr Technische Optik, University Stuttgart Pfaffenwaldring 9, 70569, Germany

b

(at present) Carl Zeiss SMT AG/LIT-TD

Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion--Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

d

Amsys, Ltd., 5 Meizarei Tiran, Jerusalem 97807, Israel

Abstract
In earlier publications, it was shown that scanning of surfaces by dark beams can be exploited for sub-wavelength feature analysis. In this work, we present vector simulations based on Rigorous Coupled-Wave Analysis with the purpose to estimate the expected resolution of the method, both lateral (feature size) and axial (height). The dark beam used in this study has a line singularity generated by a -phase step positioned in a Gaussian beam. Various combinations of the illumination and detection numerical apertures (from NA=0.2 to NA=0.8) and different surface features were studied. Polarization effects, which become significant at high numerical apertures, were considered as an additional source of information for the analysis. In the case of a sub-wavelength feature on an ideal surface, the resolution of the method is limited only by the electronics noise. In particular, under a reasonable assumption of a 105 signal to noise ratio, it is possible to detect a 0.2 nm step. Keywords: Nano-scale, Dark beam, High NA, Polarization, Microscopy

1. Introduction
Dark-Beam microscopy 1-2 is a new laser imaging technique which utilizes wavefront singularities (dislocations) of the scanning beam to emphasize small phase contrast inhomogeneities. In the present communication we present numerical simulations of such systems in order to study the attainable resolutions and the possibility of interpret the images of subwavelength micro-structures. Scalar diffraction often encountered in the literature is not adequate for treating cases involving sub-wavelength features and high numerical aperture (NA) optics. In particular, polarization effects are expected to play an important role. Therefore, vector diffraction was applied based on the Rigorous Coupled-Wave Analysis (RCWA) 3,4 and Hopkins5 theoretical approaches used by us previously to simulate high NA microscope images6,7 taking polarization effects into account. The paper is organized as follows. A general scanning Dark-Beam microscope is shown in Sec. 2. Although any type of the dark beam can be used in principle, in the present paper we discuss the results for line-type singularity only. The shape of the Dark Beam is described and its dependence on the wavelength, numerical aperture and input polarization is outlined. The computational procedures are outlined in Sec. 3. Typical simulation examples are presented in Sec. 4. System resolution in the axial and lateral directions and a method for resolving two adjacent sub-wavelength structures based on polarization is discussed in Sec. 5.
*

A. Tavrov can be contacted at tavrov@ito.uni-stuttgart.de

2. Scanning dark-beam microscopy

Dark beams are singular laser beams obtained by introduction of a phase mask in the beam path. Such phase singularities are inherent properties of the resulting beam and are conserved in propagation of the beam through space and ideal optical systems. Phase singularities are related to symmetry properties of the forming system and can be associated with the corresponding quantum numbers such as parity or angular momentum. 8 Interaction of such beams with optical structured encountered on their path leads to a change of their symmetry properties. In the case of small interactions, it is possible to reconstruct the disturbance by measuring the beam properties in the detection plane 1. The advantage of dark beams is the particular sensitivity to phase objects and the ability to measure small isolated structures with simple detection schemes without recourse to changing the probe height at each scan position 9. The principal optical schematics of dark-beam microscopy is shown in Fig. 1. The laser beam is collimated and expanded and passed through the phase mask (PM) containing the line singularity centered with respect to the beam. The resulting singular laser beam is focused on the inspected sample by a high NA microscope objective lens. As a result, one obtains the critical illumination scheme used, for example, in confocal microscopy. The relay lens forms an image in the detection plane optically conjugated with the spot in the object plane. Optical magnification results both from the objective lens and the relay lens. The image of the whole surface is obtained by scanning the illuminated spot over the object sample. By contrast with confocal microscopy, the axial spot position needs not to be scanned. Instead, height information is deduced from the spot image in the detection plane. Note that in practical applications the limited information provided by simple detection systems do not permit a complete height reconstruction. However, this information is sufficient to calculate, for instance, the volume (size times height) of an isolated phase structure illuminated by the beam. In the present paper we consider the simplest class of the dark beams obtained with a phase mask containing a phase step. This phase singularity converts the beam from a symmetric Gaussian form to the antisymmetric (in amplitude) shape. The beam shape changes with focusing or propagation but retains the property of antisymmetry.
etectionplane p lane DD etection
R elay lens PM M P ollim ator CC ollim ator Laser L aser

B BS S

O Obbjectiv je c tiv e NsA le n S am p le S am ple

Figure 1.
Dark-Beam microscope.

We begin the discussion of the Dark Beam microscope by considering an ideal mirror object. Fig. 2 shows the intensity distribution in the detector plane for a dark beam (a) and conventional Gaussian beam (b). This intensity was calculated taking into account the full optical path from the laser to the object and back to the detection plane. The dark line-like region in Fig. 2a results from the line phase singularity of the mask PM. Both spots were calculated for TE polarization whose orientation was set along the line singularity of the phase mask. Laser wavelength was 510 nm, NA=0.4, and the relay lens had a unity magnification In general, the intensity distribution in the Dark-Beam depends on the wavelength, numerical aperture of the focusing objective, and polarization. The first two parameters (given the size of the input collimated beam) determine the size of the focused spot. In addition, some diffraction effects are introduced when high-power microscope objectives are used. In order to illustrate the dependence on the wavelength and numerical aperture, in Fig. 3 we show the intensity profile in the image of the focused spot, taken across the singularity direction, calculated for four laser wavelengths: =457 nm, 488 nm, 510 nm, 630 nm and two numerical apertures: NA=0.4 and NA=0.8.

a).

b).

Figure 2. Dark-Beam (a) and Gaussian (b) focal spots for the system in Fig. 1, calculated for =510 nm and NA=0.4.

a).

b).

Figure 3. Intensity distribution across the Dark-Beam spot for the wavelengths: 457, 488, 510, and 630 nm, evaluated for NA=0.4 (a) and NA=0.8 in (b). The full scale of the horizontal axis is 2 m. The spot size increases monotonically with increase of the wavelength.

It is known that in the critical illumination scheme in conventional microscopy the focal spot image depends on polarization11,10. A similar effect occurs also for the Dark-Beam illumination. The polarization dependence becomes stronger with increase of the numerical aperture. In Fig. 4 we show the Dark-Beam portraits focused spot images for an ideal mirror as an object for three different apertures. The plots show the intensity distributions in the imaged spot, and have been evaluated for NA=0.1, 0.4, and 0.8 for each incoming beam polarization separately. As above, we define the TE polarization mode as such where the linear polarization of the input collimated beam is set along the phase singularity line. We also present the differential images obtained by subtraction of the TE and TM intensity images for each corresponding NA. In comparing the plots in Fig. 4 one must bear in mind that the scale reflects the minimum and maximum intensity values in each plot and is therefore different from plot to plot. Inspection of Fig. 4 shows that the difference between the TE and TM intensities, which is only 0.6% for NA=0.1, increases to 4% for NA=0.4 and 16% for NA=0.8. This result is in an agreement with the theoretical prediction for the conventional 11 illumination . The detection system used in the present paper is a two-cell photodetector placed on the optical axis symmetrically with respect to the dark line. The system provides a differential signal, i.e., the difference between the signals of the two cells. The advantage of this simple arrangement is that in the case of an ideal surface, the individual cell signals are equal and the differential signal is identically zero (apart from the system noise). Thus any non-zero signal is indicative of an optical structure on the surface. It can be shown 1 that in the case of subwavelength structures, the detector signal is proportional to the volume of the structure, i.e., its lateral size multiplied by average height. A scan of the complete object surface results in a Dark Beam picture of the object. The sensitivity of Dark-Beam microscope depends on the effective size of the photodetector cells and their positions with respect to the Dark-Beam maxima. Fig. 5 illustrates the tuning of the microscope by changing the position of the two cells of the split photodetector. In Fig. 5a the cells are placed at the maxima of DarkBeam intensity; in Fig. 5b they are placed at the maxima of the derivative of the intensity, and finally, in Fig. 5c they are placed even closer than the derivative maxima (similar results are obtained if the detectors are placed wider).

a).

d).

g).

b).

e).

h).

c).

f).

i).

Figure 4. Polarization dependence of Dark-Beam intensity images for various numerical apertures. NA=0.1: (a) TE, (b) TM, (c) the difference of the plots (a) and (b). NA=0.4: (d) TE, (e) TM, (f) the difference of the plots (d) and (e). NA=0.8: (g) TE, (h) TM, (i) the difference of the plots (g) and (h).

a).

b). a).

c).

c). d). e).

Figure 5. Differential signals (a)-(c) from two-cell photodetector for various cells positions, which are shown on the DarkBeam intensity profile background (d), sketch of step-form topology (e).

s te p h e ig h t

b).

All the above results were evaluated for the photodetector cell diameter of 20 m (which can be realized by placing a 20 m diameter pinholes in front of real photodetectors. The optical magnification here was 100x. In the scalar approach, the polarization dependence of the images is not taken into account. In order to reconstruct the original profile of the object from complete Dark-Beam images, it would have been possible to apply the Gabor transform,12 as it was done for a Gaussian beam.13 The reconstruction procedure operates on a number of cross-sections of the DarkBeam in the detection plane, each corresponding to a consequent scan position. Application of the Gabor transform to Dark Beam microscopy is outside the scope of the present paper and will be considered elsewhere. In order to do so, the Gabor transform must be generalized for non-Gaussian scanning beams and also take into account the polarization effects, if not the full vector diffraction theory. However, the Gabor-like representation of Dark Beam images, where the vertical axis of the plot corresponds to a scan position of the beam over the surface and each horizontal line shows the gray-level beam profile, is very informative and is adopted here.

a).

b).

Figure 6. Dark-Beam images (a) and differential signals from two-cells photodetector (b) evaluated for two polarizations in TE and TM modes. The images were resulted by the 2 m lateral scan of the rectangular step-form topology (Fig. 5 (e)) with the nominal height of 50 nm by the Dark-Beam microscope with NA=0.4 at =510 nm.

An example of such Gabor-like Dark-Beam images is shown in Fig. 6a. The scan position is varied over the scan range of 2 m with a step of 40 nm, with a total of 101 scan steps. The upper sub-plot corresponds to the TE polarization mode (Y polarization), and the lower one corresponds to the TM mode (X polarization). The polarization effect, which is already visible here, will become more marked if the numerical aperture is increased from 0.4 to 0.8. For comparison, Fig. 6b shows the differential Black Beam signal, also for both polarizations. It is clear that the polarization effects are important, and become even more so for higher numerical apertures, which in turn are required for high-resolution imaging. This fact provided the main motivation of the present paper to apply rigorous vector diffraction theory techniques to study of the method. The numerical simulations were performed using the rigorous vector diffraction theory with the RCWA and Hopkins effective source approaches. We have mainly used the software package MICROSIM developed at the Institut fr Technische Optik.6-7

3. RCWA-Rigorous coupled-wave analysis for Dark-beam microscopy simulations

We have performed simulations of scanning Dark-Beam microscopy to various optical structures in Si substrate. In order to take into account the polarization effects, we have applied the RCWA 3,4 and the Hopkins image-formation theory by using an effective source 5. We use the MICROSIM software package that incorporates rigorous vector diffraction routines for microscopy. Detailed description of the calculation procedures in the MICROSIM package and several simulations of other microscopy applications can be found in the literature.6,7

The microscope objective is represented by a set of two circular pupils, one for illumination and the other for imaging. For simulation purposes they are divided into rectangular patches each corresponding to a numerical aperture of a size NA=0.05. Each patch generates an obliquely incident plane wave, which interacts with the object and produces a spatialfrequency spectrum in the exit pupil of the microscope lens. The final image is the incoherent sum of all images produced by different regions of the effective-source. The 3-D distribution of the non-normalized Jones vector is given by: J x, y , z =

L (k t )

H (k t ) exp(ik

r ) cos

12

2 ~ E x (k t ) ( ) ~ , E y (k t )

(1)

~ where L(kt) is the effective-source intensity, H(kt) is the coherent transfer function of the microscopy lens, E (k t ) is the
Fourier spectrum of the structure image corresponding to the incident field given by the propagation vector k t , ~ 2 2 2 12 kx ky cos( )1/ 2 = (k 0 ) / k 0 , and z is the defocus. The Fourier spectrum E (k t ) is computed rigorously by use of the RCWA, that is described well in the literature version of the RCWA.
3,4

and we also omit a detailed description. We use the rapidly convergent

Surface structures were represented as expansion in gratings. Step structures were simulated using a large grating constant. In order to ensure the accuracy of the representation of surface structures, the grating parameters must be chosen with care. Since a two-fold improvement in representation accuracy results in a four times increase in the computational time, the optimal period and mode number must be found. We have found that the sufficient accuracy is achieved with a grating period 10 times smaller than that of a single surface structure and using 50 modes. The convergence and accuracy were checked for small line widths, which proved to be the most critical test. Once the computational parameters were determined, we have scanned the object position and stored the calculated image distributions for each scan position. Then the detector signals were calculated by integration over each detector cell area and the differential signal was computed.

4. Simulations results
Dark-Beam microscopy implements coherent surface analysis, which incorporates several effects. The first effect is diffraction of the Dark-Beam on the surface micro-structure. The second effect is imaging with a high numerical aperture. Finally the correlation between laterally separated points is studied by using the differential photodetector signal. In this section we present preliminary results purporting to show the main features of the method. More detailed study will be presented elsewhere. In Fig. 7 we show the results calculated for the step-shape micro-structures (Fig. 5e) in amorphous Si, having the heights of 10 nm, 50 nm, 100 nm and 200 nm. The calculation is performed for the microscope lens NA=0.4 and magnification M=1x. The results were calculated for both polarizations, denoted as X for the TM mode (open circles in the plots) and Y for the TE mode (asterisks in the plots). The two peaks, one negative and the other positive, are produced by the two lobes of the dark beam encountering the step during the scan. The oscillations observed especially for large step heights (Figs. 7c and 7d) are an analog of the Gibbs phenomenon; they can be tuned by choosing the position and size of the photodetectors. The strength of the signal increases with the step height, although not linearly (linearity is expected only for small step heights). The plots although exhibit a non-negligible dependence on polarization. The maximal resolutions in axial (height) and lateral directions are briefly studied in the next section.

a).

b).

c).

d).

Figure 7. Evaluated Dark-Beam portraits of step-form micro-topologies with various nominal heights of 10 nm (a), 50 nm (b), 100 nm (c), 200 nm (d).

a).

b).

Figure 8. Evaluated Dark-Beam images to show maximal resolutions. Axial resolution is shown on the portraits of the step-form microtopology with nominal height of 0.2 nm (a). Mixed lateral and axial case is shown on the portraits of the trench-form microtopology with 0.2 nm height and 0.2 m width (b).

5. Resolution limitations
We show here estimates of height sensitivity and size resolution in Dark-Beam imaging. We begin the study of the axial (height) sensitivity with the help of a step-shape micro-structure. This shape is advantageous because it does not mix the effect of the lateral resolution with the height contrast as would happen for a slit-type surface structure. The later structure is used to estimate the lateral resolution. In the case of an ideal surface, the height sensitivity of the Dark Beam microscope is limited only by the ability of the electronics to detect a small signal. The difficulty here is to detect the small differential signal which is a result of subtraction of two relatively large signals (in the example of Fig. 7a, the amplitude of the differential signal is 3 units, whereas the amplitude of the subtracted background is 350). In the present estimate, we have assumed that the two-cell photodetector is a PIN-type with a dynamical range of 105. We can safely assume that the photodetector amplifier noise is the dominant -5 electronics noise, so the minimum detectable signal is 10 of the maximum. (In practice, the dominant noise will be the optical noise associated with the surface roughness; however, in many applications this noise should be regarded as a signal rather than noise.) In Fig. 8a. we show the Dark-Beam results for a step structure of the height of 0.2 nm. The calculated peak-to-peak differential signal of 0.3 units (for the TM mode) must be compared with the background signal of 6000 units (see the left subplot). This requires the SNR of at least 2104 for the TM the mode. For the TE mode the requirement is about three times 5 more severe. Therefore, under assumption that a SNR = 10 is achievable, the 0.2 nm height is readily detectable.

a).

50 nm

300 nm

b).

c).

50 nm

100 nm

d).

Figure 9. Evaluated Dark-Beam images to show the linewidths separation. Topology sketches on left. Dark-Beam scans on center. Differential signals on right. TE mode is drawn in upper subplot and is marked by *-marks. TM mode in lower subplot and by o-marks.

In Fig. 8b we show similar results for a trench-shape microstructure with the same height of 0.2 nm and line width of 0.2 m. We see that SNR=8104 is required, and that this structure is also observable with the Dark Beam microscope. In order to estimate the lateral resolution, we have used several trench-shape microstructures with single and double lines of different widths and the same depth of 50 nm. The calculated results are shown in Fig. 9 together with the exact geometry of the microstructures. In Fig. 9a we evaluate a single trench of linewidth of 300 nm. In Fig. 9b the structure contains a double trench of 100 nm width each separated by 100 nm. In Figs 9c and 9d are similar but the critical dimensions reduced to 35 nm line width and 30 nm separation. It is clear that simultaneous consideration of the signal in both polarizations allows one to clearly distinguish between the single- and double-trench structures. The effect is most pronounced in the TM mode (given this orientation of the trench structure). This recognition is achieved without requiring a high SNR. Our results, although very preliminary, demonstrate a very high sensitivity of the Dark Beam microscopy. A much more detailed study, taking into account different shapes of the microstructure, will be undertaken separately. An important noise factor not considered here is the optical signal associated with the surface roughness. In most applications this signal must be regarded as a noise factor which will actually be the dominant noise and will degrade the sensitivity well below the above shown limit. However, this optical signal can also provide a quantitative measure of the surface roughness.9

Conclusions
Rigorous vector diffraction calculations were performed for simulation of the operation of the scanning Dark-Beam microscope in application to inspection of subwavelength structures on ideal surfaces. A very high sensitivity and resolution of the method were demonstrated, although clearly some a-priori information about the inspected object is necessary in order to reconstruct its topology or measure its geometry. This information is usually available, as for instance in the semiconductor industry where a typical task is to measure the critical parameters of a known structure.

Acknowledgements
The present research is performed under the LASSAR project supported in part by the EU Commission. The authors are grateful to the Institut fr Technische Optik where the reported calculations were performed. The authors are also grateful to other participants in the project for useful discussions.

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M. Totzeck, H. Jacobsen, and H. J. Tiziani, Edge localization of subwavelength structures by use of polarization interferometry and extreme-value criteria, Appl. Opt. 39, 62956305 (2000). Richards, B., and Wolf, E., , Proc. Roy. Soc. (London) A, 253, 358 (1959). D. Gabor, Theory of Communication, J. Inst. Elec. Eng. 93/III, 429-457 (1946); M. Friedman, T. Kotzer, and J. Shamir, High-quality surface measurements using Gabor expansion, Proc. SPIE 2651, 117-125 (1996).

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