Influence of solubility switching mechanism on resist performance in molecular glass resists

Abstract

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.

Chain-Scission Polyethers for EUV Lithography

“…These properties, however, have been found to be inversely related, a relationship commonly referred to as the RLS trade-off [1]. To overcome the RLS trade-off, the lithographic community is investigating alternative resist platforms such as molecular glasses [2][3][4], polymer-bound photoacid generators (PAGs) [5][6][7], and chain-scission polymers [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21].…”

Single-component molecular resists containing bound photoacid generator functionality

“…This is expected due to the fully protected, non-ionic nature of the compound. Photoacid generation in NBB was confirmed by loading it into another molecular glass resist (THPE-THP) 27 at 10 weight percent and exposing films of the mixture to 248 nm ultraviolet light.…”

Novel Star Polymers as Chemically Amplified Positive-Tone Photoresists for KrF Lithography Applications

“…Fortunately, numerous valuable studies have attempted to overcome the aforementioned issues. In the preceding few decades, additional architectures such as branched polymers, , molecular glasses, , polymer-bound-PAG, − and nonchemically amplified ones − have been introduced as photoresist components.…”