多探头扫描探针显微镜系统

Multi-probe SPM system

虽然扫描探针显微镜具有高分辨率等优异性能 ,但不足之处也显而易见。较低的扫描和采样速度使工作效率不高。多探针或多探头的概念就是为提高扫描探针显微镜的工作效率而提出的。为了摸索多探头扫描探针显微镜的特点和解决半导体工业晶片检测的实际需求 ,我们设计了四探头SPM。本文主要介绍我们研制的四探头扫描探针显微镜系统 。

The applications of SPM in industries have been constantly propelled by the demanding requirements for new tools to create and inspect products having nanometer sized dimensions. SPM has more and more often been investigated for the potential use in ultra high density recording. For example, recently, a data density of as high as～500 Gbit(10 9 bit)/in 2 and a data transfer rate of～10 Mbit/s have been demonstrated using AFM based technique. However, a major restriction of the current SPM is the limiting slow scan rate of the probe over the surface. Thus, a single measurement or fabrication of a single pattern is time consuming. Therefore, it is the object to develop a system that overcomes the major limitations and at the same time, taking advantage of the nanometer scale resolution of the scanning probe for routinely creating nanometer sized features on substrate of interests. For the purpose above, we have designed a multi probe SPM that supports rapid parallel inspections and data acquisitions. The pattern generations are achieved by simultaneous operation of four scanning probe microscopes, via the control of four so called slave controllers, which effectively communicate with a master workstation. Absolute control of the master workstation over the slave controllers is achieved via an Ethernet link and an 'overlay' program within the master workstation can effectively control the scanning parameters and display acquired data obtained from each slave controller. As model experiments, we performed surface morphology measurement using the multi probe SPM. The results indicated that multi probe SPM allows multiple spots to be analyzed simultaneously with faster speed and high resolution.