Hitachi High-Tech is strengthening its joint development framework with ZEISS Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology (ZEISS SMT) for in-line multi-beam inspection tools. The company says the move will speed up tools that find small wafer defects at inspection speeds "several dozen times faster" than conventional single-beam methods.
The tools combine Hitachi High-Tech's e-beam and optical inspection platforms for 300mm wafers with ZEISS SMT's 91-beam multi-column technology. Hitachi High-Tech says on-site evaluations of prototype tools have shown it is feasible to detect small defects that existing optical inspection tools have trouble catching. The planned products also include AI-assisted inspection algorithms.
The pressure comes from the leading edge of logic manufacturing. As chipmakers begin high-volume production of 2nm-node devices and adopt High-NA EUV lithography, Hitachi High-Tech says optical tools struggle to inspect defects around 10nm stably. Single-beam tools have been used in-line for limited jobs such as hotspot inspection. But rising device complexity and more stochastic defects have expanded the number of inspection areas and layers, which makes it hard for them to hold the throughput a mass production line needs. Hitachi High-Tech calls multi-beam tools the "only solution" that delivers both the sensitivity and the speed these processes require.
For yield and process engineers in fabs, the detail to watch is capability. Hitachi High-Tech says multi-beam tools can also run buried defect inspection and voltage contrast inspection, which detects open and short defects from electrical potential differences and which the company describes as quite difficult for optical tools.
Hitachi High-Tech plans to run inspections and demonstrations on mass production wafers through customer co-creation activities, with the goal of winning Process of Record (POR) status. It will deploy the tools under HMAX Industry for Semiconductors, its Physical AI-based industrial solutions offering. The company says its customer network holds the largest share of the global metrology tool market, and it also cites the top worldwide share in CD-SEMs.
