Two-dimensional spatial-phase-locked electron-beam lithography via sparse sampling

Abstract

The ability of electron-beam lithography (EBL) to create sub-10-nm features with arbitrary geometry makes it a critical tool in many important applications in nanoscale science and technology. The conventional EBL system is limited by its poor absolute-placement accuracy, often worse than its resolution. Spatial-phase-locked electron-beam lithography (SPLEBL) improves the placement accuracy of EBL tools to the nanometer level by directly referencing the beam position via a global-fiducial grid placed on the substrate, and providing feedback corrections to the beam position. SPLEBL has several different modes of operation, and it can be applied to both scanning electron-beam lithography (SEBL) and variable-shaped-beam lithography. This research focuses primarily on implementing real-time SPLEBL in SEBL systems.Real-time SPLEBL consists of three major components: a fiducial-reference grid, a beam-position detection algorithm and a partial-beam blanker. Several types of fiducial grids and their fabrication processes were developed and evaluated for their signal-to-noise ratio and ease of usage. An algorithm for detecting the beam position based on Fourier techniques was implemented, and -1 nm placement accuracy achieved. Finally, various approaches to partial-beam blanking were examined, and one based on an electrostatic quadrupole lens was shown to provide the best performance.

A Survey of Non-Raster Scan Methods with Application to Atomic Force Microscopy

“…Because of the relative spatial frequencies of the sampling and fiducial grids, the measurements yield a two-dimensional Moiré pattern. This pattern can be analyzed to yield the positioning errors [53]. [54].…”

Synthesis of nickelocene containing polyimides with low-dielectric constants

“…PIs have been widely used as dielectric and packaging materials in the microelectronics industry because of their good mechanical, thermal, and dielectric properties [22,23]. However, with Ä of about 3.4, most of PIs are insufficient in meeting the requirement of Ä < 2.5 for the dielectrics of the near future [24], and the ultra-low Ä of less than 2.2 for the technology nodes below 130 nm [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. In the present study, we implement a novel approach by using organic-inorganic nanocomposites with well-defined architectures to tether nickelocene groups to the main chains of pre-synthesized polyimide to form films.…”

Amino-propyl-triethoxy-silane on aluminum fiducial grids for spatial-phase-locked electron-beam lithography

“…1, [11][12][13] More recently, we investigated grids for low beam energy SPLEBL based on alkanethiol selfassembled-monolayers ͑SAM͒ on metallic surfaces such as Au and Cu. The variances of the beam position estimates ͑⌬x , ⌬y͒ are inversely proportion the signal-to-noise ratio ͑SNR͒ of the grid.…”