A series of new anionic PAGs, as well as PAG-bound polymers designed for use in 193 nm photoresist materials, have been synthesized and characterized. These novel materials provide optical transparency at 193 nm and also good etch resistance. PAG incorporated resists and PAG blended resists were exposed at a wavelength of 193 nm using an ASML 5500/950B optical lithography system with 0.63 NA. Exposed wafers were evaluated using SEM. The fluorine substituted PAG bound polymer and PAG blend resist provided a 110 nm (220 nm pitch) line/ space at 11.5, 13.0 mJ cm 22 , and 80 nm isolated features at 3 and 1 mJ cm 22 , respectively. The LER (3s) results showed that the fluorinated PAG bound polymer has LER values of 6.7 and 6.8 nm for isolated 80 nm and dense 110 nm lines, respectively, while the fluorinated PAG blend resist has LER values of 8.6 and 8.9 nm. The improvement may be due to the direct bonding of PAG into the polymer main-chain, which provides a more uniform distribution, thereby controlling acid diffusion and allowing a higher loading of PAG than the blend sample. The fluorine-free PAG bound or blend resists showed lower photospeed compared to photoresists based on fluorine-substituted PAGs.
Polymer structure effect on dissolution characteristics and acid diffusion in chemically amplified deep ultraviolet resists J.The need for chemically amplified resists ͑CARs͒ that can resolve sub-65-nm node features with sufficient linewidth roughness ͑LWR͒ control and sensitivity to meet the requirements outlined in the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors has placed a significant and daunting challenge for the design of resist materials that can achieve these goals. In this article, the ability to improve the performance of CARs designed for 193 nm lithography via the direct bonding of a photoacid generator ͑PAG͒ anion into the resist polymer main chain has been investigated. The bound-PAG anion resist is shown to achieve higher sensitivity and resolution with smaller LWR than their blended-PAG resist analog. Binding of the PAG anion provides reduced photoacid diffusivity, higher maximum PAG loadings, and more homogeneous PAG distributions that help achieve these three critical resist requirements.
Negative tone molecular resists using cationic polymerization: Comparison of epoxide and oxetane functional groups J.Simple fabrication of UV nanoimprint templates using critical energy electron beam lithography Five different molecular glass chemically amplified photoresists which utilized different solubility switching mechanisms and chemistries, based on a tris͑4-hydroxyphenyl͒ethane ͑THPE͒ core, were synthesized and their performance compared. Three different positive tone systems were designed based on acid catalyzed deprotection of a phenolic hydroxyl group protected with one of the following groups: tert-butoxycarbonyl ͑tBoc͒, tetrahydropyranyl, or ethoxyethyl. Two negative tone systems were designed; one using cationic epoxide polymerization of pendant epoxides and one using condensation of the unprotected THPE with a multifunctional cross-linking additive. The tBoc system and negative tone systems showed good performance under deep UV and large field e-beam patterning, but the epoxide system showed far superior performance for high resolution electron beam patterning. It was able to produce 50 nm 1:1 line/space patterns and 30 nm lines on 1:3 line/space patterns with high sensitivity, good contrast, and a very low line edge roughness ͑3͒ of 2.3 nm using 100 keV electron beam patterning.
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