AFM-based Hamaker Constant Determination with Blind Tip Reconstruction

Particle contamination of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photomasks is one of the numerous challenges in nanoscale semiconductor fabrication, since it can lead to systematic device failures when disturbed patterns are projected repeatedly onto wafers during EUV exposure. Understanding adhesion of particle contamination is key in devising a strategy for cleaning of photomasks. In this work, particle contamination is treated as a particle-plane problem in which surface roughness and the interacting materials have major influences. For this purpose, we perform vacuum atomic force microscopy (AFM) contact measurements to quantify the van der Waals (vdW) forces between tip and sample. We introduce this as a vacuum AFM-based methodology that combines numerical Hamaker theory and Blind Tip Reconstruction (BTR). We have determined the Hamaker constants of \(15x10^{-20} J\) and \(13x10^{-20} J\) for the material systems of a silicon (Si) tip with both aluminum oxide (\(Al_{2}O_{3}\)) and native silicon dioxide (\(SiO_{2}\)) on Si substrates, respectively. Our methodology allows an alternative, quick and low-cost approach to characterize the Hamaker constant within the right order of magnitude for any material combination.