Tuesday, July 10, 2012: SANTA CLARA, USA: Applied Materials unveiled its Applied UVision5 wafer inspection system for detecting defects in the critical patterning layers of logic devices at the sub-20nm node. The system's deep ultra-violet (DUV) laser and simultaneous brightfield and greyfield light collection capabilities deliver up to double the light intensity to the wafer over previous tools, enabling the UVision 5 system to capture up to twice the number of killer defects.


The UVision 5 system's powerful optical system provides up to twice the light density to the wafer and, using its proprietary collection optic path, accumulates up to 30% more scattered light than its predecessor. This feature, combined with new, proprietary image processing algorithms that reduce wafer-induced noise by up to 50%, boost the system's detection capabilities for critical monitoring applications, such as ArF immersion lithography, double and quad patterning and EUVL layers.

Itai Rosenfeld, corporate VP and GM of Applied Process Diagnostics and Control business unit said that the innovations in the UVision 5 system are enabling chipmakers to find and characterize these ultra-small defects to boost yield and reduce cycle time.

For foundry customers, UVision 5 introduces time saving innovations that speed up the production process of chip design. It also offers "hands-free" integration with Applied's industry-standard SEMVision G5 defect review system offering a complete inspection and review solution. In addition, the system can utilize design information for building layout data which can improve defect capture rate and save up to 15 hours of operator time per inspection recipe.