Generalized ellipsometry of artificially designed line width roughness

Abstract : We use azimuthally resolved spectroscopic Mueller matrix ellipsometry to study a periodic silicon line structure with and without artificially-generated line width roughness (LWR). We model the artificially perturbed grating using one- and two-dimensional rigorous coupled-wave methods in order to evaluate the sensitivity of the experimental spectrally resolved data, measured using a generalized ellipsometer, to the dimensional parameters of LWR. The sensitivity is investigated in the context of multiple conical mounting (azimuth angle) configurations, providing more information about the grating profile.