High-speed combined NIR low-coherence interferometry for wafer metrology

In this investigation, we describe a combined low-coherence interferometric technique to measure the surface and thickness profiles of wafers at once with high speed. The measurement system consists of a spectrally resolved interferometer to provide and monitor the optical path difference between two incident beams of the optical source part and a low-coherence scanning interferometer to measure the dimensions of wafers with significantly shortened scanning length. In the experiments, a silicon wafer and a sapphire wafer, of which both sides are polished, were used as targets of the measurement system for verification of the proposed system. As a result, the scanning length of the low-coherence scanning interferometer was reduced from a few millimeters to a few hundreds of micrometers approximately 10 times. In addition, surface profiles of both sides and thickness profiles were simultaneously measured to reconstruct 3D shapes of wafers.