The recent introduction of chromeless-phase lithography (CPL) has provided lithographers with a powerful wavefront engineering tool for patterning at k1 values below 0.3. Reliable image formation at such extreme k1 requires a wellcharacterized CPL photomask. However, the limitations of available optical inspection tools have made the test and measurement of CPL photomasks a difficult task. In t...

The operational cost of 300mm wafer production is significantly greater than that of 200mm fabs. Real-time monitoring of product can save time and money through reduced scrap and decreased cycle time. Current process monitoring generally incorporates stand-alone metrology, which is time consuming and requires excessive wafer handling by production operators. The benefits of integrated metrology...

Dimensional metrology for micro/nano structure is crucial for addressing quality issues and understanding the performance of micro-fabricated products and micro-fabrication processes. Most of the established methods are based on optical microscopy for planar dimensions and stylus profilometry for out-of-plane dimensions. Contact profilers suffer from slow speed of measurement for three-dimensio...

The optical interferometry systems are widely used for surface metrology. However, the environmental noise and the data analysis approach can limit the measurement performance during inprocess inspection. This paper introduces a wavelength scanning interferometer (WSI) for micro and nano-scale areal surface measurement. The WSI can measure large discontinuous surface profiles without phase ambi...

Surface topography analysis plays a very significant role in determining the functional performance for many engineering surfaces. In this paper, feature characterisation techniques, based on the ‘Wolf pruning’ method are implemented to characterise micro and nano-scale features which have a dominant effect on the functional lifespan of flexible Photovoltaic (PV) modules. The densities and dime...

Controlling light at the nanoscale is of fundamental importance and is essential for applications ranging from optical sensing and metrology to information processing, communications, and quantum optics. Considerable efforts are currently directed towards optical nanoantennas that directionally convert light into strongly localized energy and vice versa. Here we present highly directional 3D na...

We show how a generalized quantum metrology protocol can be implemented in a twomode Bose-Einstein condensate of n atoms, achieving a sensitivity that scales better than 1/n and approaches 1 /n^'^ for appropriate design of the condensate.