Monte Carlo modeling in the low-energy domain of the secondary electron emission of polymethylmethacrylate for critical-dimension scanning electron microscopy

The main scattering mechanisms governing the transport of electrons in PMMA in an energy domain ranging from the energy of the primary electron beam down to few hundreds of meV are identified. A quantitative Monte Carlo model for the emission of secondary electrons is developed to be applied for critical dimensions extraction from high-resolution scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images. Selected results are presented, which demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed approach.