The present invention includes a method and
system for determining the profile of a structure in an
integrated circuit from a measured
signal, the
signal measured off the structure with a
metrology device, selecting a best match of the measured
signal in a profile
data space, the profile
data space having data points with a specified extent of non-
linearity, and performing a refinement procedure to determine refined profile parameters. One embodiment includes a refinement procedure comprising finding a polyhedron in a function domain of cost functions of the profile
library signals and profile parameters and minimizing the total cost function using the
weighted average method. Other embodiments include profile parameter refinement procedures using
sensitivity analysis, a clustering approach, regression-based methods, localized fine-resolution refinement
library method, iterative
library refinement method, and other
cost optimization or refinement algorithms, procedures, and methods. Refinement of profile parameters may be invoked automatically or invoked based on predetermined criteria such as exceeding an error metric between the measured signal versus the best match profile library.