Lithographic performance of advanced, thin resists

摘要

In order to shrink minimum feature sizes, many next-generation resists are beig developed. One novel resist, based on a hyperbranced, dendritic polymer chemistry, is examined and compared to UVII-HS and APEX-E standard resists in order ot determine its effectiveness and manufacturability. Data to date shows that many parameters of the dendritic hyperbranched resist are quite comparable to these standard resists: it is senitive to 35kV e-beam at 6uC/cm~2, i-line (365nm) at 600cC/cm~2 and 248nm light. The resist is nearly as resistant to etching as current resist technologies. It can also act as either a positive or negative tone resist. Preliminary line edge roughness data shwo that the dendrimer resist appears to be at least comparable if not superior to standard resits in this regard as well. The expected benefits envisioned in the development of dendritic ressist materials (by Frechet grup, ef 1) appear to be attainable in practice. Namely that higher polymer density and improved geometry allow smaller end-to-end chain lengths.