Patent attributes
Methods and systems for measuring metrology targets smaller than the illumination spot size employed to perform the measurement are described herein. Collected measurement signals contaminated with information from structures surrounding the target area are reconstructed to eliminate the contamination. In some examples, measurement signals associated one or more small targets and one or more large targets located in close proximity to one another are used to train a signal reconstruction model. The model is subsequently used to reconstruct measurement signals from other small targets. In some other examples, multiple measurements of a small target at different locations within the target are de-convolved to estimate target area intensity. Reconstructed measurement signals are determined by a convolution of the illumination spot profile and the target area intensity. In a further aspect, the reconstructed signals are used to estimate values of parameters of interest associated with the measured structures.
