Soft X-Ray Spectromicroscopy and its Application to Semiconductor Microstructure Characterization

The universal trend towards device miniaturization has driven the semiconductor industry to develop sophisticated and complex instrumentation for the characterization of microstructures. Many significant problems of relevance to the semiconductor industry cannot be solved with conventional analysis techniques, but can be addressed with soft X-ray spectromicroscopy. An active spectromicroscopy program is being developed at the Advanced Light Source, attracting both the semiconductor industry and the materials science academic community. Examples of spectromicroscopy techniques are presented. An Advanced Light Source μ-XPS spectromicroscopy project is discussed, involving the first microscope completely dedicated and designed for microstructure analysis on patterned silicon wafers.