As semiconductor devices continue to scale into fully three-dimensional architectures, traditional metrology approaches are reaching their limits. Advanced nodes, heterogeneous integration, and novel materials demand not only higher resolution – but deeper insight into how nanoscale physical properties translate into yield, reliability, and performance.
Against this backdrop, Chipmetrics and Park Systems are working together to redefine how semiconductor manufacturers measure, understand, and control their processes. By combining Chipmetrics’ standardized test chips with Park Systems’ industry-leading scanning probe microscopy (SPM) platforms, the collaboration enables more accurate, comparable, and actionable metrology – across R&D and into high-volume manufacturing.
According to Dr. Sang-Joon Cho, Executive Vice President of the Research Equipment Business Unit at Park Systems, this convergence represents a critical shift in how the industry approaches nanoscale measurement.
“SPM has evolved from a purely lab-based research technique into a robust industrial metrology platform. When combined with standardized test structures, it becomes a powerful foundation for next-generation process control and data-driven manufacturing.”
Understanding Thin Films at the Nanoscale
Thin films lie at the heart of modern semiconductor devices, yet their most critical properties – surface roughness, thickness variation, local stiffness, electrical behavior – are inherently nanoscale and highly localized.
Scanning probe microscopy, particularly atomic force microscopy (AFM), addresses this challenge by directly interacting with the surface. As Dr. Cho explains, SPM tools measure local forces, currents, or electromagnetic interactions point by point as a probe scans across the sample. By selecting different imaging or spectroscopy modes, the same probe can generate spatially resolved maps of:
- Surface topography and roughness
- Film thickness and step height
- Mechanical properties such as stiffness and adhesion
- Electrical behavior including conductivity and charge distribution
Unlike conventional techniques that report global averages, SPM delivers true spatial maps, revealing variations that directly impact device performance and yield.
Electrical and Optical Properties Beyond Topography
Modern SPM platforms extend far beyond surface imaging. Today’s tools can measure a wide range of electrical and optical properties critical to semiconductor manufacturing, including:
- Surface potential and work function via Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM)
- Ferroelectric and piezoelectric behavior using piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM)
- Local conductivity and leakage paths through conductive AFM
- Capacitance and dopant distribution using scanning capacitance or microwave impedance microscopy
On the optical side, near-field techniques enable nanoscale access to properties such as reflectivity, absorption, refractive index, fluorescence, and photoluminescence – capabilities increasingly important for advanced materials and packaging technologies.
In practice, this means that SPM can measure nearly every relevant physical property at the nanoscale, making it an indispensable reference metrology technique.
Park Systems’ Strength in Quantitative, Wafer-Scale Mapping
Park Systems has focused its SPM portfolio on quantitative, low-noise, and highly repeatable measurements – requirements that are essential for semiconductor manufacturing, not just research.
Key capabilities include:
- Sub-angstrom roughness and high-accuracy step-height measurement
- High-fidelity surface potential mapping
- Correlated topography, mechanical, electrical, and magnetic property mapping within a single automated workflow
Crucially, Park Systems has brought these capabilities to full-wafer, industrial AFM platforms, enabling statistically meaningful property mapping directly in fab environments. Automation, environmental control, and integrated analysis software allow these tools to operate 24/7, supporting both inline and near-line use cases.
Why Standardized Test Chips Matter More Than Ever
While SPM provides unmatched nanoscale insight, Dr. Cho emphasizes that measurement alone is not enough. Interpreting results, comparing tools, and building predictive models all depend on having well-designed, standardized test structures.
This is where Chipmetrics’ standardized test chips play a critical role.
“Standardized test patterns provide common, well-understood targets that allow different tools, techniques, and vendors to benchmark against the same structures. This enables truly comparable and transferable metrology.”
By using standardized layouts instead of custom, one-off test patterns, fabs and tool vendors can:
- Benchmark metrology performance across tools and sites
- Validate new SPM modes and measurement methodologies more efficiently
- Build more robust models for variability, roughness, stress, and reliability
- Enable cross-correlation between SPM, optical, e-beam, and X-ray metrology
For SPM specifically, test structures designed with probe access in mind – such as line-space patterns, 3D features, and controlled materials stacks – make it far easier to link nanoscale measurements directly to device performance.
Extending SPM Metrology into High-Aspect-Ratio Structures with PillarHall® Test Chips
As device architectures move deeper into three-dimensional geometries, metrology challenges are no longer confined to planar surfaces. High-aspect-ratio structures – such as deep trenches, vias, and cavities – are now central to advanced logic, memory, and packaging technologies. Measuring thin-film conformality, thickness variation, and material properties along vertical sidewalls has become a critical requirement.
This is where the combination of Park Systems’ SPM platforms and Chipmetrics’ PillarHall® standardized test chips provides unique value.
PillarHall test chips are specifically designed to create well-defined, high-aspect-ratio cavities that serve as controlled test environments for evaluating deposition and etch processes. When paired with SPM, these structures enable direct nanoscale analysis of thin films inside complex 3D features, not just on the top surface.
How SPM Enables Sidewall and Cavity Metrology
Scanning probe microscopy is inherently surface-sensitive and local, making it well suited for probing cross-sectioned or exposed cavity geometries in PillarHall structures. Using AFM-based techniques, engineers can:
- Measure film thickness, roughness, and step height along cavity sidewalls after selective cleaving or cross-section preparation
- Evaluate conformality and uniformity of ALD, CVD, or liner films across different depths of high-aspect-ratio features
- Map mechanical properties such as stiffness or adhesion variations between top, sidewall, and bottom surfaces
- Perform electrical measurements – including conductivity or surface potential – on thin films deposited within cavities
Because PillarHall structures are standardized and repeatable, SPM measurements taken at different depths or locations within the cavity can be directly compared across tools, wafers, fabs, or even different process generations.
Why Standardization Matters for High-Aspect-Ratio Metrology
Traditional high-aspect-ratio metrology often relies on destructive techniques or indirect inference from top-surface measurements. By contrast, the combination of PillarHall test chips and SPM provides a quantitative, spatially resolved reference that complements optical, e-beam, and X-ray techniques.
As Dr. Cho notes:
“Standardized test patterns provide common, well-understood targets that allow different tools, techniques, and vendors to benchmark against the same structures. This enables truly comparable and transferable metrology.”
For 3D features, this comparability is especially important. Small variations in sidewall film thickness or material properties can have outsized impacts on electrical performance and reliability. Standardized PillarHall cavities give process and yield engineers a reliable ground truth for correlating nanoscale measurements with device outcomes.
From R&D to Inline Reference Metrology
In R&D, SPM combined with PillarHall test chips allows rapid evaluation of new deposition recipes, liner materials, or surface treatments in a controlled and repeatable geometry. In manufacturing environments, the same structures can be used as inline or near-line reference monitors, supporting:
- Early detection of conformality drift in high-aspect-ratio processes
- Faster root-cause analysis when yield excursions occur
- More confident qualification of new tools or process changes
Because Park Systems’ industrial AFM platforms support automated wafer handling and recipe-driven measurement workflows, these analyses can be performed with minimal manual intervention – bringing nanoscale insight closer to real-time process control.
A Foundation for Digital Twins and AI-Driven Process Control
High-aspect-ratio features are also among the most difficult structures to model accurately. AI-driven digital twins and advanced process control systems depend on high-quality, consistent training data, particularly for complex 3D geometries.
Standardized PillarHall test chips provide consistent physical targets, while SPM delivers rich, localized measurements of thin-film behavior within those targets. Together, they create a clean, trusted dataset that can be used to:
- Train models that link deposition parameters to sidewall film properties
- Correlate SPM data with optical, e-beam, and X-ray metrology
- Validate simulations and predictive process models
As Dr. Cho emphasizes:
“The most successful implementations will treat AFM not as a standalone specialty tool, but as a tightly integrated part of a broader metrology and data ecosystem – linked to standardized test structures, digital twins, and AI-driven process control.”
A Win-Win Collaboration for Advanced 3D Devices
By extending standardized test structures into the third dimension, the Chipmetrics–Park Systems collaboration directly addresses one of the most pressing challenges in semiconductor manufacturing: how to measure what truly matters inside complex device geometries.
- Chipmetrics’ PillarHall test chips provide reproducible, high-aspect-ratio structures that reflect real process challenges
- Park Systems’ SPM platforms deliver quantitative nanoscale insight into thin films on planar surfaces and deep within 3D cavities
Together, they enable faster learning cycles, more reliable qualification, and better control of the processes that define next-generation logic, memory, and packaging technologies.
For semiconductor manufacturers pushing the limits of 3D integration, this integrated approach offers a clearer path from nanoscale measurement to scalable production success.