Environmental stability of chemically amplified resists: proposing an industry standard methodology for testing

摘要

The authors propose the establishment of a new industry standard methodology for testing the environmental stability of chemically amplified chemical resists. Preparatory to making this proposal, they developed a pertinent test apparatus and test procedure that might be used uniformly as an industry-wide best prestice. To demonstrate and validate their proposed moethodology, the authors subjected two different 193 nm chemically amplified photoresists to test conditions in the "torture chamber," simulating actual libhorgrpahic environmental scenarios. Dependeing on the variables of each test run (e.g., different resists, different resist thicknesses, different pollutants, different concentrations, and different humidity levels), a variety of defects were noted and described quantitatively. Of the three contaminants tested, ammonia had the strongest effect. The thin resists were more strongly affected by the contamination.