Concepedia

Publication | Closed Access

Progress in 193-nm top-surface imaging process development

DOI

12

Citations

0

References

1998

Year

John M. Hutchinson, Veena Rao, Guojing Zhang, Adam R. Pawloski, Carlos Fonseca, Janet Chambers, Susan M. Holl, Siddhartha Das, Craig C. Henderson, David R. Wheeler
Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Abstract

The maturity and acceptance of top surface imaging (TSI) technology has been hampered by several factors including inadequate resist sensitivity and silylation contrast, defects and line edge roughness and equipment performance/reliability issues. We found that the use of a chemically amplified resist can improve the sensitivity by a factor of 1.5 - 2X, without compromising line edge roughness. While the post-silylation contrast of this chemically amplified material is poor ((gamma) < 1), the post-etch contrast is excellent ((gamma) >> 10) and the use of advanced silylation chemistries (disilanes) can further reduce the dose-to-size and increase the contrast. We have also demonstrated that using sulfur dioxide in the plasma etch process can improve the sidewall passivation of the resist lines, thus reducing the overall line edge roughness. Finally, we have been able to successfully use the TSI process to pattern deep sub-micron polysilicon and metal patterns.