Computational study of line tip printability of sub-20-nm technology

Abstract

This paper illustrates the increasing importance of line tip printing as measured by the size of the weak line tip zone for sub-20nm technology. This paper suggests adding line tip printability into sub-20nm lithography performance metric in addition to the conventional tip-to-tip resolution. This study shows that these two metrics sometimes respond to lithography conditions inversely. The importance of including line tip printability into technology evaluation is demonstrated by comparing LELE optical lithography and EUV lithography. Also, line tip printing with EUV lithography is explored with various illumination conditions and resist developer tones.

Metal1 patterning study for random-logic applications with 193i, using calibrated OPC for litho and etch

“…With the delay of inserting EUV into high volume manufacturing, mature 193nm immersion lithography appears to be the most reliable option to tackle the critical layers for the next Logic nodes, such as the Metal1 (M1) layer studied in this paper [1][2][3][4][5] . Rather than using a single exposure, as in the case of EUV, several exposures are needed to overcome the Rayleigh resolution limit determined at 193i.…”