Synthesis of stable acid amplifiers that produce strong highly-fluorinated polymer-bound acid

Abstract

A novel series of stable, acid amplifiers (AAs) has been designed and tested for use in Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, that generate strong, fluorinated polymer bound sulfonic acids. Novel polymer bound and blended AAs were prepared in moderate to good yields and characterized by NMR. We demonstrated by EUV lithography that the polymer bound AA resist has line-edge roughness (LER) values of 3.8 nm and the polymer blended AA resist has LER values of 2.1 nm while the control resist has LER values of 4.6 nm. Although sensitivity comparisons have yet to be made, these new resists using bound and blended AAs are showing remarkable improvements in LER when compared with the control resist without AAs.