MILPITAS, Calif., Jan. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Today KLA-Tencor Corporation(NASDAQ: KLAC), announced three new wafer defect
inspection systems for leading-edge chip manufacturers: the
2900, Puma 9650 and eS800 systems. This new flagship suite is
designed to address the wide range of defect issues that new
materials, structures and design rules have imposed on
manufacturers of advanced chips. The new 2900 Series
broadband optical wafer defect inspection platform extends
optical wafer defect inspection to new limits, with
significant strides forward in defect capture on challenging
layers and die areas, and capture of yield-relevant defects
as small as 10nm. Complementing the 2900 is the new Puma 9650
Series narrowband optical wafer defect inspection system,
which advances the Puma product line's unique
combination of sensitivity and throughput to new heights of
performance on many layers, including difficult gate etch
layers. To capture extremely small defects or shallow
residues, or defects inside deep, narrow structures, the new
eS800 Series e-beam wafer defect inspection platform can
leverage its proprietary design for achieving high electron
beam current density.
Each of the inspection systems in the new portfolio features
seamless connectivity to the recently introduced
eDR-7000
e-
beam wafer defect review system. With outstanding
sensitivity and review speed, the eDR-7000 completes the
process of identifying the defect types found by the
inspectors, allowing engineers to address defect issues
promptly and disposition wafers accurately.
"Our leading-edge customers have a wide variety of
defect problems to solve, the most difficult of which involve
finding tiny or subtle defects amidst pattern noise, deep
inside a capacitor, or in otherwise difficult
environments," said Mike Kirk, Ph.D., group vice
president of the Wafer Inspection Group at KLA-Tencor.
"The trio of new inspection systems that we are
announcing today incorporates exceptional work by our
engineering teams: new, more powerful light sources or
electron guns, innovative signal shaping and a multifold
approach to reducing noise. The resulting advancements in
signal-to-noise are impressive for each
tool. We believe that these three products will play a vital
role in enabling our customers to bring their next-generation
logic and memory devices to market."
The 2900 Series broadband optical wafer defect inspection
platform delivers increased capture of small defects of
interest on early process layers and back-end layers, with
sensitivity approaching that of e-beam inspection in some
cases. Its overall defect capture on after-develop inspection
(ADI) layers rivals that of after-etch inspection (AEI)
results. The tool's dramatically improved ADI
performance means that the fab can identify killer defects
earlier in the process, allowing engineers to correct the
issue before more time and material have been wasted. These
performance breakthroughs are enabled by innovations
throughout the system, including:
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