Recyclable fluorine-based cleaning solvents for resist removal

摘要

The development of new functional cleaning agents is strongly required for leading-edge LSIfabrication, such as resist removal process without any damage to low-k materials. For example, asexcessive acid cleaning agents would damage such materials. Consequently, a low damage cleaningtechnique with no collapsing fine structures is also desirable. On the other hand, the concept ofrecycle of cleaning agents is an urgent issue for the reduction of cleaning cost. Therefore, bothcleaning ability and easy recyclable function are essential for next generation cleaning agents.Fluorine-based cleaning agents have been widely used for cleaning, rinsing and drying process in theelectronics industry. Asahi Glass Corporation (AGC) has commercialized various fluorine-basedcleaning agents as AC-series (Hydrofluorocarbon: HFC) and AE-series (Hydorofluoroether: HFE).Typical properties of these compounds are summarized in Table I. Here we report the application offluorine-based cleaning agents to ArF resist removal and the evaluation of the recycles.