Wafer inspection, the science of finding killer defects in chips, is reaching a critical juncture. Optical inspection, the workhorse technology in the fab, is being stretched to the limit at advanced ...

Electron-beam inspection is proving to be indispensable for finding critical defects at sub-5nm dimensions. The challenge now is how to speed up the process to make it economically palatable to fabs.

ASML, the dominant semiconductor lithography supplier, also has a dominant share of the electron beam inspection sector. ASML’s introduced two new e-beam systems in 2022, the single beam eScan 430 and ...