Light-induced damage in semiconductor device manufacturing: Present and future challenges

Advances in semiconductor manufacturing over the past few decades, driven by the need for smaller, faster, and more efficient devices, have pushed enormous progress in light sources for lithography and metrology. However, the smaller feature sizes and more costly wafer real estate necessitate smaller spot sizes, smaller test/alignment markers, and higher light intensities. This combination has made light-induced damage an obstacle to fast, reliable wafer-lithography, -metrology, -leveling, and -