Caliper élan
Advanced 300mm Overlay Control System

Caliper élan is the most advanced overlay metrology solution from Nanometrics, drawing on the knowledge of the most experienced  overlay team in the industry. Élan builds on the solid foundation established by the original Caliper overlay inspection tool to provide the most cost effective solution for today's most advanced IC manufacturing processes.

Caliper élan is the culmination of over 100 man-years of continuous development. This effort created the most cost effective overlay metrology tool on the market. Élan extends the production-proven Caliper platform with a refined optics head coupled with advanced focusing and algorithms. The result: greater than 50% MAM time improvement complemented by a 50% improvement in overlay measurement uncertainty.

Caliper élan is truly production ready, with a comprehensive, proven GEM SECS suite and Automated Material Handling System integration as standard. A variety of handler configurations is available, with up to four FOUP loadports or open cassette load stations compatible with 200mm or 300mm wafers.

For the very highest levels of productivity, Caliper élan supports the SynRG (Synthetic Recipe Generator) option. A new waferless recipe creation application. SynRG takes known design details about device layout, and processes them to create a metrology recipe automatically optimized for the product and process. Using advanced image simulation methods, SynRG is able to simulate the effects of process variation, producing robust, production-ready recipes. SynRG can be fully integrated into the data network to provide completely hands-free recipe creation, supporting the most advanced Design-Based Metrology (DBM) implementations.