Our modern society is significantly influenced by the performance and miniaturization of microchips. Over the last decades, the complexity of integrated circuits has regularly doubled in relation to component costs (Moore's Law). Metrology in semiconductor manufacturing technology has also played a part in this development.
Already today, structure sizes of less than 10 nm are achieved, which places very special demands on their measurement of the structures, e.g. for quality control. Optical scattering methods, such as scatterometry, offer a fast, indirect and precise measuring method for determining the geometric properties of nanostructured surfaces. The surface is illuminated with light and the reflected radiation intensity is measured. From the intensity pattern, the original nanostructure can be reconstructed by solving an inverse problem. To solve the inverse problem, it is necessary to simulate the measurement process as accurately as possible, which corresponds to a virtual experiment.