CHARACTERISTICS AND APPLICATIONS OF A SCANNING NANO-SLIT OPTICAL SENSOR

Abstract

In this dissertation, imaging characteristics of a nano-slit are investigated. Applications of a scanning and rotating nano-slit in measuring sub-micron aerial features are demonstrated. Coherent sub-micron spot distributions are reconstructed with a very high contrast. Finally, high NA partially coherent images with features as small as 210 nm half-pitch are reconstructed and the ultimate resolution of the system is determined.A nano-slit is characterized as a sensor for coherent line-and-space features. Experiments and simulation verify image detection with contrasts greater than 0.9. Effects of polarization on imaging performance are reported. A scanning and rotating nano-slit in conjunction with a filtered back-projection technique is used to reconstruct sub-micron coherent spot distributions. Simulation results show very good agreement with the experiment. Further, it is shown that the reconstruction is very resilient to some common random experimental errors.Imaging characteristics of a scanning nano-slit sensor are determined for high NA partially coherent images. Good imaging performance (contrast > 0.8) is demonstrated with line-and-space images up to a spatial frequency of 2.38 lp / micron. Sub-micron features in a high NA partially coherent image are measured with a scanning and rotating nano-slit. A modified microscope is used to create the measured features, including 210 nm half-pitch features that cannot be imaged using the microscope in a conventional imaging mode. Using the filtered back projection technique, two-dimensional sub-micron features are reconstructed by the nano-slit sensor. It is determined that the resolution limit of ~ 200 nm is determined by the reconstruction technique and not by the width of the nano-slit.