Photolithography reaches 6 nm half-pitch using EUV light

Fan, Daniel; Ekinci, Yasin

doi:10.1117/12.2219737

Cited by 24 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 21 publications

(26 reference statements)

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“…5 Compared with traditional organic chemically amplified photoresists (CARs), some of these inorganic photoresists show higher sensitivity, 2,4,9,10 can form thinner layers, have higher etching resistance, 9 and potentially yield both lower line-edge roughness and higher resolution due to the smaller building blocks. [11][12][13] Such findings have shown the great potential for inorganic materials to be used as EUV photoresist. CARs have now been used and optimized for many years, first for deep UV (DUV) and more recently for EUV, and their critical photochemical reactions are generally well understood.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Photochemical conversion of tin-oxo cage compounds studied using hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

et al. 2017

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Photochemical conversion of tin-oxo cage compounds studied using hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Photochemical conversion of tin-oxo cage compounds studied using hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

Haitjema

Liu

Johansson

et al. 2017

J. Micro/Nanolith. MEMS MOEMS

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, "Photochemical conversion of tin-oxo cage compounds studied using hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy," J. Micro/Nanolith. MEMS MOEMS 16(2), 023510 (2017), doi: 10.1117/1.JMM.16.2.023510. Abstract. Molecular inorganic materials are currently considered photoresists for extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL). Their high EUV absorption cross section and small building block size potentially allow high sensitivity and resolution as well as low line-edge roughness. The photochemical reaction mechanisms that allow these kinds of materials to function as photoresists, however, are still poorly understood. We discuss photochemical reactions upon deep UV (DUV) irradiation of a model negative-tone EUV photoresist material, namely the welldefined molecular tin-oxo cage compound ½ðSnBuÞ 12 O 14 ðOHÞ 6 ðOHÞ 2 , which is spin-coated to thin layers of 20 nm. The core electronic structures (Sn 3d, O 1s, and C 1s) of unexposed and DUV exposed films were then investigated using synchrotron radiation-based hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Different chemical oxidation states and concentrations of atoms and atom types in the unexposed and exposed films were found. We observed that the exposure in a nitrogen atmosphere prevented the oxidation but still led to carbon loss, albeit with a smaller conversion. Finally, a mechanistic hypothesis for the basic DUV photoreactions in molecular tin-oxo cages is proposed. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

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“…One good advantage of EUV-IL is that we use the coherent light from synchrotron with the wavelength λ = 13.5 nm, so the theoretical resolution limit of this technique is 3.5 nm [12], that is much higher than the EUV scanner with 0.33NA and the future high NA (0.55NA) [3]. The XIL-IL has successfully achieved world record of 6 nm HP [13] and demonstrated single digital resolution down to 2.5 nm technological node [12]. With the XIL-IL we can investigate the LER and sensitivity of the EUV resist platforms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress in EUV resists towards high-NA EUV lithography

Wang

Taşdemir

Mochi

et al. 2019

Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Lithography X

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High-NA extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) is going to deliver the high-volume manufacturing (HVM) patterning for sub-7 nm nodes for the semiconductor industry. One of the critical challenges is to develop suitable EUV resists at high resolution with high sensitivity and low line-edge roughness (LER). The resist performance is generally limited by the resolution-LER-sensitivity (RLS) tradeoff and it is critical to find new resists that have a performance beyond this tradeoff. EUV interference lithography (EUV-IL) is a powerful and efficient technique that can print high resolution: half pitch (HP) down to 6 nm nanostructures. In this work, we evaluate the performance of the EUV resists, including molecular resist, inorganic resist, chemically-amplified (CAR) and metal sensitizer chemically-amplified resist (Metal-CAR). Six resists with the best performance have been compared in dose-to-size, line-edge roughness, exposure latitude for half pitch 16 nm and 14 nm. The molecular resist A showed lowest dose to resolve HP 16 nm (35 mJ/cm 2 ) and 14 nm (41 mJ/cm 2 ) but with high line edge roughness (LER 3.5 nm). CAR resist C provided lowest LER 1.9 and 1.8 nm for HP 16 nm and HP 14 nm, respectively, but with higher doses 74 mJ/cm 2 (HP 16 nm) and 69 mJ/cm 2 (HP 14 nm). The inorganic resist showed comprehensive good performance, giving low LER of 2.1 nm with 50 mJ/cm 2 and 42 mJ/cm 2 for HP 16 nm and HP 14 nm, respectively. Using the simplified Z-factor model, we showed that the LER of the resists was improved over the last two years. As the inorganic resist could resolve HP 11 nm with dose 67 mJ/cm 2 , we conclude it to be the current best candidate to partially resolve the RLS tradeoff problem and could be the potential EUV resist for semiconductor technological node printing.

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Photolithography reaches 6 nm half-pitch using EUV light

Cited by 24 publications

References 21 publications

Photochemical conversion of tin-oxo cage compounds studied using hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

Photochemical conversion of tin-oxo cage compounds studied using hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

Photochemical conversion of tin-oxo cage compounds studied using hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

Progress in EUV resists towards high-NA EUV lithography

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