KLA 200 Series Reticle Inspection Systems

KLARIS (KLA Reticle Inspection System) was the first automatic inspection system to ensure that killer defects as small as 0.7 microns on both reticles and photomasks would be detected. KLA reticle inspection systems were life savers, as manual inspection simply was not practical, and was virtually impossible to perform error-free on VLSI circuits. with line widths approaching one micron. There were three systems in the series: The KLA-201 Automatic Photomask Inspection Station for inspecting photomasks and multi-die reticles for random defects. It didn’t have repeating defect inspection and single-die reticle inspection capability. The KLA-221 Automatic Reticle and Photomask Inspection System inspected photomasks, multi-die reticles, single-die reticles and glass wafers for both random and repeating defects. This system employed both die-to-die and die-to-database inspection technology. The KLA-224 Automatic Reticle Inspection System was designed for dedicated, high-volume reticle inspection applications. It had higher throughput on SX and 1 OX reticles, and provides repeating defect inspection for photomasks and multi-die reticles. The high numerical aperture optics of these systems made it possible to detect 95% of all defects of 0.9 microns and above.