Abstract: A method includes forming a gate stack on a first portion of a semiconductor substrate, removing a second portion of the semiconductor substrate on a side of the gate stack to form a recess, growing a semiconductor region starting from the recess, implanting the semiconductor region with an impurity, and performing a melt anneal on the semiconductor region. At least a portion of the semiconductor region is molten during the melt anneal.

Abstract: A method of forming a semiconductor device includes forming a source/drain region and a gate electrode adjacent the source/drain region, forming a hard mask over the gate electrode, forming a bottom mask over the source/drain region, wherein the gate electrode is exposed, and performing a nitridation process on the hard mask over the gate electrode. The bottom mask remains over the source/drain region during the nitridation process and is removed after the nitridation. The method further includes forming a silicide over the source/drain region after removing the bottom mask.

Abstract: A differential filtering chromatic confocal microscopic system comprises a chromatic dispersion objective for receiving and axially dispersing a broadband light from a light source and projecting dispersed lights onto an object thereby forming an object light reflected therefrom; an optical modulation module for dividing the object light into a first and a second object lights; a pair of optical intensity sensing module, respectively having a spatial filter with a different pinhole diameter or a slit width from each other, for detecting the first and second object lights, thereby obtaining a plurality of first and second optical intensity signals; and a signal processor for respectively processing the plurality of first and second optical intensity signals thereby obtaining a plurality of differential rational values of optical intensity and determining a corresponding object depth associated with each differential rational value according to a relation between signal intensity ratio and object surface depth.

Abstract: The present invention provides measuring apparatus and method for three-dimensional profilometry of an object, wherein a random-speckle beam and a structured fringe beam are projected onto the object and reflected therefrom for forming deformed random-speckle beam and structured fringe beams that are separately acquired by an image acquiring device thereby obtaining a random-speckle image utilized to determine an absolute phase information of each position on the surface of the object, and a structured fringe image utilized to determine a relative phase information for each position of the surface of the object. Each absolute phase information and each relative phase information corresponding to each position are converted into an absolute depth and a relative depth, respectively. Finally, the depth information of each position on the surface of the object is calculated by combining the corresponding absolute depth and the relative depth whereby the surface profile of the object can be established.

Abstract: A chromatic confocal microscope system and signal process method is provided to utilize a first optical fiber module for modulating a light into a detecting light passing through a chromatic dispersion objective and thereby forming a plurality of chromatic dispersion lights to project onto an object. A second optical fiber module conjugated with the first optical fiber module receives a reflected object light for forming a filtered light, which is split into two filtered lights detected by two color sensing units for generating two sets of RGB intensity signals, wherein one set of RGB intensity signals is adjusted relative to the other set of RGB intensity signals. Then two sets of RGB intensity signals are calculated for obtaining a maximum ratio factor. Finally, according to the maximum ratio factor and a depth relation curve, the surface profile of the object can be reconstructed.

Abstract: The present invention provides measuring apparatus and method for three-dimensional profilometry of an object, wherein a random-speckle beam and a structured fringe beam are projected onto the object and reflected therefrom for forming deformed random-speckle beam and structured fringe beams that are separately acquired by an image acquiring device thereby obtaining a random-speckle image utilized to determine an absolute phase information of each position on the surface of the object, and a structured fringe image utilized to determine a relative phase information for each position of the surface of the object. Each absolute phase information and each relative phase information corresponding to each position are converted into an absolute depth and a relative depth, respectively. Finally, the depth information of each position on the surface of the object is calculated by combining the corresponding absolute depth and the relative depth whereby the surface profile of the object can be established.

Abstract: A differential filtering chromatic confocal microscopic system comprises a chromatic dispersion objective for receiving and axially dispersing a broadband light from a light source and projecting dispersed lights onto an object thereby forming an object light reflected therefrom; an optical modulation module for dividing the object light into a first and a second object lights; a pair of optical intensity sensing module, respectively having a spatial filter with a different pinhole diameter or a slit width from each other, for detecting the first and second object lights, thereby obtaining a plurality of first and second optical intensity signals; and a signal processor for respectively processing the plurality of first and second optical intensity signals thereby obtaining a plurality of differential rational values of optical intensity and determining a corresponding object depth associated with each differential rational value according to a relation between signal intensity ratio and object surface depth.

Abstract: The present invention provides a slit-scan multi-wavelength confocal lens module, utilizing at least two lenses having chromatic aberration for splitting a broadband light into continuously linear spectral lights having different focal length respectively. The present invention utilizes the confocal lens module employing slit-scan confocal principle and chromatic dispersion techniques and the confocal microscopy with optical sectioning ability and high resolution in spectral dispersion to establish a confocal microscopy method and system with long DOF and high resolution, capable of modulating a broadband light to produce the axial chromatic dispersion and focus on different depths toward an object's surface for obtaining the reflected light spectrum from the surface.

Abstract: The present invention provides a chromatic confocal microscopic system in which two conjugate fiber modules are spatially configured and employed to conduct a detecting light from a light source and an object light reflected from an object, respectively. By means of the two spatially corresponding fiber modules, the detecting light is projected on the object and the reflected light from the object is entered into the other fiber module. Since each fiber of the fiber module is capable of filtering out the unfocused light and stray lights and allowing the focused light pass therethrough a line slit, thereby minimizing potential interference from light cross talk caused by the overlapped light spots, not only can the present invention obtain the information of surface profile of the object with high vertical measurement resolution, but also achieve high lateral resolution during confocal measurement.

Abstract: The present invention provides a stroboscopic optical image mapping system comprising a control module, an optical module, and an image acquiring unit. The control unit forms a delayed pulse signal by modulating a first pulse signal having a plurality of pulses with a pulse period, wherein a time interval between two adjacent pulses of the delayed pulse signal has a time difference with respect to the pulse period. The optical module provides an incident light to be projected on an organic object, which has a dye therein and is stimulated by a second pulse signal for generating a sequential action potential. The fluorescence generates from the dye inside the organic object, which corresponds to the intensity of the sequential action potential. The image acquiring unit is actuated to acquire the fluorescent light according to the delayed pulse signal, thereby forming a plurality of fluorescent images.

Abstract: A method and system for three-dimensional polarization-based confocal microscopy are provided in the present disclosure for analyzing the surface profile of an object. In the present disclosure, a linear-polarizing structured light formed by an optical grating is projected on the object underlying profile measurement. By means of a set of polarizers and steps of shifting the structured light, a series of images with respect to the different image-acquired location associated with the object are obtained using confocal principle. Following this, a plurality of focus indexes respectively corresponding to a plurality of inspected pixels of each image are obtained for forming a focus curve with respect to the measuring depth and obtaining a peak value associated with each depth response curve. Finally, a depth location with respect to the peak value for each depth response curve is obtained for reconstructing the surface profile of the object.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method for simultaneous hue phase-shifting and a system for 3-D surface profilometry, wherein a single structured-light fringe pattern with encoded multiple trapezoidal color fringes is projected on an object so as to obtain a color image having deformed fringe patterns and then a hue information extracted from a HSI color model associated with the fringe pattern is transformed into a hue phase-shifting information for restructuring the 3-D surface profile of the object. Since the color structured light is composed of a plurality of colorful light having phase shifts with each other in spatial domain, the single structured-light pattern comprises multiple hue phase-shifting information so that the phase shifting and unwrapping can be performed by one-shot 3-D surface reconstruction process without needs of traditional conventional phase wrapping and Euler's transformation procedures such that the efficiency of phase shifting and 3-D surface measurement can be improved.

Abstract: The present invention provides a band-pass filter, being capable of fitting a frequency spectrum area having phase information in a frequency spectrum image, to obtain a spectrum information corresponding to the phase information during the process of obtaining the phase information from the frequency spectrum image with respect to an object's surface profile. In another embodiment, the present invention further provides a method to optimize the spectrum range of the band-pass filter so as to enhance measuring accuracy and efficiency while restoring the surface of the object. In addition, by employing the foregoing method, the present invention further provides a measurement system for measuring three-dimensional surface shapes in which a deformed fringe pattern with respect to the measured object's surface is acquired and the phase information is obtained from the fringe pattern according to the foregoing method so as to restore the surface profile of the measured object.

Abstract: An orthogonal-polarization Mirau interferometric system is provided, wherein a narrow-band or broad-band incident light is split into a reference light and an inspection light with the polarizations thereof being orthogonal to each other by using a beam-splitting module, while projecting the inspection light on a measured object to form an object light, and then the object light and the reference light are combined to form a combined light, and thereafter, an analyzer is utilized to modulate the polarizations and the intensities of the two lights for making the two lights interfere with each other and thus create an interference pattern. The polarization of the object light and that of the reference light can be adjusted by using an analyzer to become orthogonal to each other, and the intensities of the object light and the reference light can be adjusted to about the same for producing an interference pattern with high contrast.

Abstract: The present invention provides a stroboscopic optical image mapping system comprising a control module, an optical module, and an image acquiring unit. The control unit forms a delayed pulse signal by modulating a first pulse signal having a plurality of pulses with a pulse period, wherein a time interval between two adjacent pulses of the delayed pulse signal has a time difference with respect to the pulse period. The optical module provides an incident light to be projected on an organic object, which has a dye therein and is stimulated by a second pulse signal for generating a sequential action potential. The fluorescence generates from the dye inside the organic object, which corresponds to the intensity of the sequential action potential. The image acquiring unit is actuated to acquire the fluorescent light according to the delayed pulse signal, thereby forming a plurality of fluorescent images.

Abstract: A non-uniform image defect inspection method includes steps of inputting an original two-dimensional image; separating a non-uniform background image from the original two-dimensional image by Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) to obtain a residual image without the non-uniform background image; binarization segmenting the residual image to extract defects from the residual image, wherein the segmented defects are the inspection results.

Abstract: The present invention provides a chromatic confocal microscopic system in which two conjugate fiber modules are spatially configured and employed to conduct a detecting light from a light source and an object light reflected from an object, respectively. By means of the two spatially corresponding fiber modules, the detecting light is projected on the object and the reflected light from the object is entered into the other fiber module. Since each fiber of the fiber module is capable of filtering out the unfocused light and stray lights and allowing the focused light pass therethrough a line slit, thereby minimizing potential interference from light cross talk caused by the overlapped light spots, not only can the present invention obtain the information of surface profile of the object with high vertical measurement resolution, but also achieve high lateral resolution during confocal measurement.

Abstract: A method for out-of-plane displacement detection is disclosed. The out-of-plane displacement is detected by analyzing all the fringe density indexes calculated using the frequency-domain information extracted from a series of interference images of the sample vibrating at different frequencies. The present invention further discloses a method and an apparatus for resonant frequency identification by detecting the peak value of all the fringe indexes calculated at different scanning frequencies. With the identified resonant frequency, the full-field vibratory surface profile of the sample in various resonance modes can be reconstructed.

Abstract: A exemplary method for determining vibration displacement in interferometric scanning, in which two optical signals having a phase difference with each other of a high-coherence interferogram corresponding to a tested surface is detected for determining a shifting displacement between the reference plane of interferometric apparatus and the tested surface. In one embodiment, a series of the shifting displacements with respect to a time interval are measured for determining the vibrating frequency of the tested surface by spectrum analysis. Meanwhile, an exemplary interferometric apparatus is also disclosed for calculating the relative position between the tested surface and the reference plane of interferometric apparatus whereby the interferometric apparatus is capable of compensating influences of vibration caused by the environment or the tested surface itself so as to obtain the surface profile and vibration frequency of the tested surface.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for identifying dynamic characteristics of a vibratory object is provided in the present invention, in which a series of dynamic interference images of the vibratory object is acquired through a frequency sweeping procedure and a two-dimensional image scanning procedure. Thereafter, the acquired images are processed for obtaining the corresponding differential fringe density index by signal processing technique of band-pass filtering method so as to further identify the dynamic characteristics of the vibratory object.