High Aspect Ratio Lithographic Imaging at Ultra-high Numerical Apertures: Evanescent Interference Lithography with Resonant Reflector Underlayers

摘要

A near-field technique known as evanescent interferometric lithography allows for high resolution imaging. However its primary limitation is that the image exponentially decays within the photoresist due to physical limits. This thesis aims to overcome this limitation and presents a method to considerably enhance the depth of focus of images created using evanescent interferometric lithography by using a material underlay beneath the photoresist.A key enabler of this is the understanding that evanescent fields couple to surface states and operating within proximity of a resonance, the strength of the coupling allows for considerable energy extraction from the incident beam and redistribution of this energy in a photoresist cavity. This led to the analysis of the Fresnel equations, which suggested that such coupling was in fact the result of an enhanced reflectance that takes place at boundaries of carefully chosen materials. While it is known that metals and lossy dielectrics result in surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) and surface exciton polaritons (SEP) as conventional solutions to the Fresnel reflection equations for the TM polarization of light, there is no such naturally occurring surface state that allows evanescent wave enhancement with the TE polarization of light. Further investigation of the Fresnel reflection equations revealed both for TM and TE that in fact another solution exists that is but unconventional to enhance the reflectivity. This solution requires that one of the media have a negative loss. This is a new type of surface resonance that requires that one of the media be a gain medium; not one in the optical pumped sense but one that would naturally supply energy to a wave to make it grow. This new surface resonance is also a key result of this thesis. Clearly, however this is only a hypothetical solution as a real gain medium would violate the conservation of energy.However, as it is only the reflectance of this gain medium that is useful for evanescent wave enhancement, in fact a multilayered stack consisting of naturally occurring materials is one way to achieve the desired reflectivity. This would of course be only an emulation of the reflectivity aspect of the gain medium. This multilayered stack is then an effective gain medium for the reflectivity purposes when imaging is carried out at a particular NA at a particular wavelength. This proposal is also a key idea of this thesis. At λ = 193 nm, this method was used to propose a feasible design to image high resolution structures, NA = 1.85 at an aspect ratio of ~3.2. To experimentally demonstrate the enhancements, a new type of solid immersion test bed, the solid immersion Lloyd's mirror interference lithography test-bed was constructed. High quality line and space patterns with a half-pitch of 55.5 nm were created using λ = 405 nm, corresponding to a NA of 1.824, that is well in the evanescent regime of light. Image depths of 33-40 nm were seen. Next, the evanescent image was coupled to an effective gain medium made up of a thin layer of hafnium oxide (HfO) upon silicon dioxide (SiO2). This resulted in a considerable depth enhancement, and 105 nm tall structures were imaged.The work in this thesis details the construction of the solid immersion lithography test-bed, describes the implementation of the modeling tools, details the theory and analysis required to achieve the relevant solutions and understanding of the physical mechanism and finally experimentally demonstrates an enhancement that allows evanescent interferometric lithography beyond conventional limits.