Negative tone development process for ArF immersion extension

Abstract

A negative tone imaging with application of new developer to conventional ArF immersion resist materials is proposed for narrow trench pattern formation, which is effective to the double trench process that is one of the candidates of double patterning process for semiconductor devices below 20nm node. Significantly better resolution on narrow trench pattern and small CH pattern was observed with this negative tone development compared to positive tone development. These results suggest that this negative tone development process is one of the promising candidates for double trench process.