Physics based modelling of the impact of Unicom settings on the illumination pupils of EUV lithography machines

Abstract

Extreme Ultraviolet lithography is a vital step in the production of cutting edge computer chips that drive emergent technologies like AI, VR and the internet of things [1]. Careful control of Ultraviolet light beams by EUV machine modules such as the Unicom, Uniformity correction module, enable extremely precise printing of nano-scale structures on these chips. This thesis focuses on the construction of a model that predicts the impact of the Unicom on EUV illumination in ASML's lithography machines. Such a model could be used in a predictive maintenance scheme to prevent a fraction of unscheduled machine downtime, which can be estimated to cost ASML's customers around 38 million dollars per machine per year [2-4]. Similar problems have been tackled before [5, 6], but both existing models disregard multiple properties of the EUV machine and are incompatible with the type of measurements obtained by ASML. Therefore, the question remains how an accurate Unicom model can be constructed.
In this thesis, a physics based Unicom model was developed that can be fine-tuned to machine specific measurements. Significant reductions of up to 90.3% of prediction errors were obtained by using the model. Overall, making use of the model provided better or equivalent predictions when compared to not using the model for all but one of the investigated indicators of prediction quality. For the latter indicator errors remained within the desired bound, but further investigation is needed to discover why the Unicom model adversely affected this indicator. With an average execution time of 31.4 s, the created Unicom model in general enables swift and substantial accuracy gains.