Abstract: A semiconductor product has an anti-reflective coating layer covering a semiconductor substrate. The ARC layer is formed of a matrix substance and of nanocrystalline particles of another material than the matrix substance. The nanocrystalline particles absorb light via the quantum size effect, that is, the novel kind of ARC layer is an absorbing ARC layer.

Abstract: A lithographic tool can be adjusted by inspecting wafer images of an defect inspection tool and correlating the wafer images with images from a reference library in a database. Each reference image in the database corresponds to an initially measured amount of miss adjustment of lithographic tool parameters. The lithographic tool is adjusted automatically according to the reference image that is found to have the greatest resemblance to the wafer image. Time for adjusting is saved, operator staff needed is reduced, and objective determination criteria provide high wafer quality and yield.