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Porous organosilicate glass thin films, with k-value 2.0, were exposed to 147 nm vacuum ultra-violet (VUV) photons emitted in a Xenon capacitive coupled plasma discharge. Strong methyl bond depletion was observed, concomitant with a significant increase of the bulk dielectric constant. This indicates that, besides reactive radical diffusion, photons emitted during plasma processing do impede dielectric properties and therefore need to be tackled appropriately during patterning and integration. The detrimental effect of VUV irradiation can be partly suppressed by stuffing the low-k porous matrix with proper sacrificial polymers showing high VUV absorption together with good thermal and VUV stability. In addition, the choice of an appropriate hard-mask, showing high VUV absorption, can minimize VUV damage. Particular processing conditions allow to minimize the fluence of photons to the substrate and lead to negligible VUV damage. For patterned structures, in order to reduce VUV damage in the bulk and on feature sidewalls, the combination of both pore stuffing/material densification and absorbing hard-mask is recommended, and/or the use of low VUV-emitting plasma discharge.

The measurement of roughness of small lithographic patterns is biased by noise in the scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) used to make the measurements. Unbiasing the roughness measurement requires the measurement and subtraction of the image noise based on its unique frequency behavior. Improvement to prior white noise removal is achieved by applying a pink noise model. This pink noise removal technique was applied to roughness measurements made with different electron doses (frames of integration), different operating voltages, and different generations of SEM tools. Effective noise removal to create accurate unbiased estimates of the roughness was achieved over a wider range of SEM tool parameter settings than has been previously achieved. As a result, unbiased roughness measurements can now be used to characterize and improve stochastic variability in semiconductor lithography and patterning.

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