New NanoCD suite improves OCD process control

MILPITAS, USA: Nanometrics Inc., a leading supplier of advanced metrology systems, announced a new release of NanoCD Suite, a turnkey optical critical dimension (OCD) analysis solution with advanced modeling and recipe building capabilities.

The suite, which is composed of high-performance software and hardware components, addresses process control requirements for semiconductor devices in production at 2x nm nodes and development at 1x nm nodes. The new product incorporates NanoDiffract 3.0, a proprietary OCD software engine broadly adopted by the world’s leading memory and logic customers and production proven at 2x nm technology nodes.

The new NanoCD Suite features the most comprehensive capabilities available to model complex three-dimensional structures. This enables direct on-device, production measurements for the most advanced devices including buried-gate DRAM and non-planar CMOS, 3D FinFET transistors and stacked gate Flash architecture.

Additionally, new software features simplify OCD recipe building and include model optimization functions to significantly accelerate time to results. With these capabilities, Nanometrics customers can analyze and model hundreds of different structural measurements, or “recipes,” using a common platform.

“Process control for advanced technology devices requires metrology solutions to handle complex structures, optimize sensitivity and discriminate key parameters of interest,” said David Doyle, VP of Nanometrics’ Semiconductor Business Unit. “The release of our new calculation and modeling platform provides these capabilities, as well as the speed required for both rapid development of new technologies and process control in high-volume manufacturing.”

“OCD is quickly becoming the most widely-deployed, in-line production metrology application in the semiconductor industry,” said Dr. Timothy J. Stultz, president and CEO. “By providing a solution that addresses the challenges of three-dimensional metrology at smaller nodes while speeding time to results, we enable our customers to efficiently accelerate their technology development and product roadmaps.”

NanoCD Suite is deployed with the company’s Atlas XP+ and IMPULSE systems to provide complete turnkey solutions for both standalone and integrated OCD metrology. The product is also available now as an upgrade package to existing Nanometrics Atlas and IMPULSE customers.