Patent 7829852 was granted and assigned to Intel on November, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
In an embodiment of the present invention, a device includes a first etched feature located in a critical dimension scanning electron microscope (CD-SEM) characterization location, the first etched feature having an upper section, a middle section, and a lower section wherein the middle section is severely shrunk relative to a corresponding middle section of a second etched feature having similar dimensions and composition that is not located in a CD-SEM characterization location. In another embodiment of the present invention, the middle section of the first etched feature has a shrinkage carryover exceeding a threshold. In still another embodiment of the present invention, the middle section of the first etched feature exhibits a line edge roughness.