E-Beam Resists: Investigating Chemically
Amplified and Non-chemically Amplified Systems |
Introduction |
| The semiconductor
industry currently uses photolithographic techniques for production of
semiconductor devices. Over the years there has been a steady reduction
in the wavelength of the light used to print these devices since
wavelength reduction increases the resolution. Today both immersion
lithography at 193 nm and extreme ultraviolet at 10-20 nm are being
pursued in research and development. Both of these systems rely on
resists with chemical amplification. |
Background |
| The chemically amplified resist systems consist of a photo-acid
generator (PAG) and a polymer that incorporates an acid-sensitive
functional group, which serves as a solubility switch. The sensitivity
of the chemically amplified system is advantageous, but the sensitivity
comes with a loss in resolution that is caused by the PAG. |
| Once the
acid is generated, it diffuses into areas of the resist which were not
exposed to light. The post exposure bake further propagates this
problem. The developed features on the device therefore end up wider
than originally intended (bias), and they are not smooth (line-edge
roughness, LER). Both the bias and LER put limitations on the size of
the features that can be produced by this technique. |
 |
| A chemically
amplified or gain mechanism is required to provide high productivity for
the expensive production tools, but this is currently achieved at the
expense of the blur of the features (bias and LER). We propose a method
to decouple the gain from the blur. |
| For more details continue to
Process & Projects |
| Version History |
| Original page created 02/22/06 |
