157 nm Resist Materials: A Progress Report.

Dissolution behavior of chemically amplified resist polymers for 248-, 193-, and 157-nm lithography

Dissolution behavior of chemically amplified resist polymers for 248-, 193-, and 157-nm lithography The aqueous base development step is one of the most critical processes in modern lithographic imaging technology. Sinusoidal modulation of the exposing light intensity must be converted to a step function in the resist film during the development process. Thus, in designing high-performance resi...

Top Surface Imaging at 157 nm

Top surface imaging (TSI) has had an interesting history. This process showed great promise in the late 1980’s and several attempts were made to introduce it to full-scale manufacturing. Unfortunately, defect density problems limited the process and it fell from favor. TSI emerged again as an important part of the EUV and 193 nm strategies in the early stages of those programs because it offere...

Construction and Validation of an Angle-Resolved Scatterometer for Investigation of 157 nm Optical Materials

scatterometer optimized for near angle measurements. The system relies on a unique beam apodization scheme using gas phase absorption to produce a Gaussian pupil function. Initial results show two orders of magnitude improvement over a previous design employing a uniform pupil function. The background signature is approaching sufficient levels to measure small angle scatter from high quality EU...

Materials for Advanced Microlithography: Polymers for 157 Nm Lithography and Acid Diffusion Measurements

Behavior of candidate organic pellicle materials under 157 nm laser irradiation

Transmission loss during irradiation remains the critical limitation for polymer pellicle materials at 157 nm. In this work we establish a framework for calculating the necessary pellicle lifetime as well as a test methodology for evaluating the laser durability of candidate polymer films. We examine the role of key extrinsic environmental variables in determining film lifetime. Oxygen concentr...