Ultrasensitive metal-organic cluster resist for patterning of single exposure high numerical aperture extreme ultraviolet lithography applications

Abstract

Background: An incredible increase in the integration of electronic chips has pushed the semicon industries to endorse high numerical aperture (h-NA ∼ 0.5), extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography (EUVL) (λ ∼ 13.5 nm) at the commercial scale. Induction of h-NA postulates EUV resists that could outperform the resolution, line pattern roughness, and sensitivity (RLS) tradeoff for chip fabricators, which is currently extremely limited. Aim:The development of EUV resist to balance RLS trade-off as well as overcome throughput limitations of h-NA EUV system to facilitate high volume semiconductor manufacturing.Approach: Here, we developed indium-methacrylic acid-based metal-organic clusters resist for h-NA, EUVL. To examine the h-NA single exposure patterning potential of the resist, prescreening by sub-10 nm next-generation lithography (NGL) tools such as electron beam lithography (EBL), and helium ion beam lithography (HIBL) were conducted as a prelude to EUV exposure.Results: Dense ∼13 nm, (l/s) patterns at ∼45 and ∼30 μC∕cm 2 were well resolved by EBL and HIBL, on the top this the line edge roughness (LER) was 2.48 AE 0.04 nm, and etch resistance ∼1.98 and ∼0.34 times lower than Si and SiO 2 ∕Si systems. Also, In-MAA MOCs resist shows ultra-sensitivity of 2.3 mJ∕cm 2 towards h-NA EUVL for patterning up to 26 nm half-pitch line patterns with LER ∼2.36 AE 0.16 nm.