EUV Imaging of Nanostructures without Lenses

Abstract

Next-generation metrology solutions in various technology areas require to image sample areas at the nanoscale. Coherent diffractive imaging based on ptychography is the route towards EUV imaging of nanostructures without lenses. A key component in a table-top EUV beamline is a high-brightness high-harmonic generation (HHG) source. Since our research is mainly directed towards wafer metrology for lithography in the semiconductor industry, we adhere to a reflection setup: the EUV light is scattered by the nanostructures at the surface of the sample, and is reflected towards a CCD camera, where a far-field diffraction pattern is recorded. A data-set comprising a multitude of these diffraction patterns is generated for partially overlapping positions of the focused probe on the sample. This provides the necessary redundancy for phase retrieval of the complex-valued field of the sample. Recent advancements in both hardware and software for computation enable the development of advanced algorithms. In particular, the benefits of automatic differentiation are exploited in order to cope with a drastic growth in model complexity. Our computational imaging algorithms realize wavelengthmultiplexed reconstruction and a modal approach for the spatial coherence of the source.