• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2007.06a
• /
• pp.63-64
• /
• 2007

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.531-537
• /
• 2014

Through-silicon vias (TSVs) are fine, deep holes fabricated for connecting vertically stacked wafers during three-dimensional packaging of semiconductors. Measurement of the TSV geometry is very important because TSVs that are not manufactured as designed can cause many problems, and measuring the critical dimension (CD) of TSVs becomes more and more important, along with depth measurement. Applying white-light scanning interferometry to TSV measurement, especially the bottom CD measurement, is difficult due to the attenuation of light around the edge of the bottom of the hole when using a low numerical aperture. In this paper we propose and demonstrate four bottom CD measurement methods for TSVs: the cross section method, profile analysis method, tomographic image analysis method, and the two-dimensional Gaussian fitting method. To verify and demonstrate these methods, a practical TSV sample with a high aspect ratio of 11.2 is prepared and tested. The results from the proposed measurement methods using white-light scanning interferometry are compared to results from scanning electron microscope (SEM) measurements. The accuracy is highest for the cross section method, with an error of 3.5%, while a relative repeatability of 3.2% is achieved by the two-dimensional Gaussian fitting method.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.31 no.7
• /
• pp.605-613
• /
• 2014

Scanning white-light interferometry is an important measurement option for many surfaces. However, serious profile measurement errors can be present when measuring free-form surfaces being highly curved or tilted. When the object surface slope is not zero, the object and reference rays are no longer common path and optical aberrations impact the measurement. Aberrations mainly occur at the beam splitter in the interference objective and from misalignment in the optical system. Both effects distort the white-light interference signal when the surface slope is not zero. In this paper, we describe a modified version of white-light interferometry for eliminating these measurement errors and improving the accuracy of white-light interferometry. Moreover, we report systematic errors that are caused by optical aberrations when the object is not flat, and compare our proposed method with the conventional processing algorithm using the random ball test.

• Current Optics and Photonics
• /
• v.3 no.5
• /
• pp.408-414
• /
• 2019

In this paper we propose a method to generate a true color image in scanning white-light interferometry (SWLI). Previously, a true color image was obtained by using a color camera, or an RGB multichannel light source. Here we focused on acquiring a true color image without any hardware changes in basic SWLI, in which a monochrome camera is utilized. A Fourier transform method was used to obtain the spectral intensity distributions of the light reflected from the sample. RGB filtering was applied to the intensity distributions, to determine RGB values from the spectral intensity. Through color corrections, a true color image was generated from the RGB values. The image generated by the proposed method was verified on the basis of the RGB distance and peak signal-to-noise ratio analysis for its effectiveness.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.31 no.11
• /
• pp.999-1006
• /
• 2014

In this investigation, we explain the sub-sampling technique of white light scanning interferometry (WLSI) to improve the measurement speed. In addition to the previous work using Fourier domain analysis, several methods to extract the height from the correlogram of WLSI are described with the sub-sampling technique. Especially, Fourier-inverse Fourier transformation method adopting sub-sampling technique is proposed and the phase compensation technique is verified with simulation and experiments. The main advantage of sub-sampling is to speed up the measurements of WLSI but the precision such as repeatability is slightly poor. In case of measuring the sample which has high height step or difference, the proposed technique can be widely used to reduce the measurement time.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.24 no.4 s.193
• /
• pp.21-28
• /
• 2007

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2001.04a
• /
• pp.110-113
• /
• 2001

We present an interferometer system, which is able to perform both the phase shifting interferometry and white light interferometry. The interferometer system uses a d.c. motor to control the probe position with an accuracy of 10nm, which shows an outstanding performance on white light interferometry. However, the moving mechanism of d.c. motor is not accurate enough for the phase shifting interferometry that requires a moving precision less than 1 nm. We therefore propose a Fourier transform technique to calculate the phase of interferograms, which is strongly resistant to calibration errors and external vibration. Experimental results show that the Fourier transform technique is capable of reducing the measurement error caused by inaccurate movement within 0.1nm.

• Applied Microscopy
• /
• v.41 no.4
• /
• pp.223-228
• /
• 2011

White light scanning interferometry has been employed to analyze surface features of diverse specimens. Long established in the field of materials engineering, the technique provides quantitative three-dimensional data as well as qualitative morphological images. It uses white light that is split and reflected from a reference mirror and an object. Merged together, the light generates interference patterns representing topographical contours of the object surface. The amplitude of the z-axis data is differentiated by gray scale. The technique allows the rapid, noncontact, and wide-field measurements for morphometry of biological specimens including chondrocytes, tooth enamel, and plant leaves. Quantification of the dimension of surface structures such as width, length, and elevation angle could be achievable by white light scanning interferometry. The light reflection from plant leaves has been assumed to be sufficient for the technique. Without special specimen preparations like conductive metal coating, the technique can be increasingly used for quantitative three-dimensional surface measurements of biological specimens.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
• /
• v.18 no.3
• /
• pp.236-243
• /
• 2014

Surface profiling and film thickness measurement play an important role for inspection. White light interferometry is widely used for engineering surfaces profiling, but its applications are limited primarily to opaque surfaces with relatively simple optical reflection behavior. The conventional bucket algorithm had given inaccurate surface profiles because of the phase error that occurs when a thin-film exists on the top of the surface. Recently, reflectometry and white light scanning interferometry were combined to measure the film thickness and surface profile. These techniques, however, have found that many local minima exist, so it is necessary to make proper initial guesses to reach the global minimum quickly. In this paper we propose combing reflectometry and white light scanning interferometry to measure the thin-film thickness and surface profile. The key idea is to divide the measurement into two states; reflectometry mode and interferometry mode to obtain the thickness and profile separately. Interferogram modeling, which considers transparent thin-film, was proposed to determine parameters such as height and thickness. With the proposed method, the ambiguity in determining the thickness and the surface has been eliminated. Standard thickness specimens were measured using the proposed method. Multi-layered film measurement results were compared with AFM measurement results. The comparison showed that surface profile and thin-film thickness can be measured successfully through the proposed method.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2006.10a
• /
• pp.5-6
• /
• 2006