Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) technology is one of the promising high volume manufacturing processes for devices below 7nm. However, the technology still has several issues for HVM. Especially, RLS (Resolution, LWR, and sensitivity) trade-off remains as one of the obvious problems for resist patterning. In which, resist resolution is one of the challenges to make fine pattern. For fine patterning, High NA EUV is predicted as one of candidate for enabling the future generation of device manufacturing. In this situation, investigation of chemically amplified resist (CAR) is being intensively conducted as one of candidate material for high-NA EUVL. However, CAR has one of key challenge for mask transfer because it is expected that thin resist film thickness is applied to exhibit good lithographic performance. As one of the solutions for this issue, we focused on the novel material which selectively makes a growth of the pattern.
Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is part of the high-volume manufacturing (HVM) processes for devices beyond 7 nm node. However, the technology still has several issues for HVM. Especially, RLS (Resolution, LWR, and Sensitivity) trade-off remains as one of the obvious problems for EUV Lithography. In which, resist pattern collapse is one of the hurdles that is preventing a process window/margin for resist patterning. Resist, under-layer, and rinse materials are continuously being developed to mitigate resist pattern collapse. In such status, rinse materials for chemically amplified resist (CAR) in the development process are known well as one approach for mitigation of the pattern collapse. In this study, we focused on the effectiveness of rinse material against lithography performance with parameters, such as surface tension and affinity with resist. In the paper, Rinse material considering low surface tension and low affinity with resist exhibited significant pattern collapse mitigation and wide process window at 28nm pitch. In addition to the rinse study, a new rinse process was investigated focusing on resist surface modification for more pattern collapse mitigation than the conventional process by suppression of water droplet generation. Furthermore, New rinse process exhibited better pattern collapse margin than the conventional rinse process.
Shot noise is a significant issue in EUV lithography, especially in printing small area features like contact holes. This
brings about LCDU (Local CD Uniformity) issue and LCDU-sensitivity tradeoff. This paper describes efforts to alleviate
this issue through a novel EUV Underlayer (UL) chemistry design approach. The novel component “buffer” was
introduced into EUV UL formulations to balance back exposure energy from UL to the resist at different incident
positions. Measured back exposure dose from UL shows much lower variation (6σ/mean) compared with shot noise of
resist absorbed dose. Thus summed energy variation will be suppressed when counting back exposure effect of UL,
namely shot noise is reduced. Through reported shot noise model, our calculation suggests 30% sensitivity improvement
and 13.4% shot noise suppression can be expected. Actual lithographic evaluations demonstrated simultaneous LCDU
and sensitivity improvement. The feasibility of 30% sensitivity improvement by Metal hard mask (MHM) material was
tested. The combination of buffer functionalized UL and MHM was modeled.
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