Visit our office on Friday, March 24, 2017 from 5pm - 7pm as we serve some craft brew, bites to eat, and some friendly chatter as we all catch up on our work at the nanoscale and atomic force microscopy (AFM)!

Park Systems
3040 Olcott Street
Santa Clara, CA 95054

This month, join us as we welcome a special guest speaker, an imec Senior Researcher, Dr. Tae-Gon Kim! Dr. Kim will be on hand to discuss the advances that have been made with AFM-based 3D metrology. His talk, titled "In-line (3D) AFM as Solution Provider for Beyond N10 Process" as well as a live demonstration of our high vacuum AFM system for failure analysis research, the Park NX-Hivac, will round out the scheduled program.

Dr. Tae-Gon Kim, Senior Researcher at imec

Learn more about Dr. Kim and his talk by via his abstract and bio:

In-line (3D) AFM as Solution Provider for Beyond N10 Process

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was introduced 30 years ago and it has been widely used in various technology domains such as material science, semiconductor, biotechnology, and so on in order to understand mechanical and chemical properties of materials fundamentally as well as the physical and chemical interactions between materials at nanoscale. Even though this technique contributes to technological improvements, AFM is one of the techniques that does not seem to be considered a metrology tool for high volume manufacturing. It may be caused by low productivity due to long measurement lead time and less user-friendliness as compared to other high-throughput metrology techniques such as CD-SEM and scatterometry (or OCD) and so on. As structure size is getting smaller and smaller, atomic resolution and gage R&R of sub-atomic levels without structure is required in metrology. The issue becomes especially critical in the semiconductor industry because devices scale down to 10, 7, and 5 nm. Furthemore, device shape becomes vertical and three-dimensional as with a horizontal or vertical nanowire. Semiconductor industry demands metrology techniques to fulfill these types of requirements.

In this presentation, what solutions in-line (3D) AFM can provide at different processes such as etch, CMP, lithography, and device applications (FinFET and 3D packaging) are discussed. It also shows what AFM activities at imec are done in order to fulfill the needs of the semiconductor industry in terms of production compatibility.

About Dr. Tae-Gon Kim

Tae-Gon Kim received his masters degree in materials science and engineering in 2001 and his PhD degree in 2008 from Hanyang University in South Korea. Since 2010, he is a scientific researcher responsible for in-line metrology at imec Belgium. In his reserach career, he has been leading activity on advanced film characterization as well as in-line metrology techniques for STT-MRAM devices and in-line 3D-AFM technology for 3 dimensional structure characterization such as sidewall characterization of FinFET and nanowires. He developed a new methodology of measuring pattern strength and particle adhesion forces using atomic force microscope and reported the world's first physical cleaning process window as a result of the study. He has been a postdoctoral research fellow at KU Leuven (2008-2010) and in 2010 he became a senior researcher at imec. He contributes to academia as an adjunct professor at Hanyang University.