EUV lithographic process enablement with novel litho track hardware

Currently, there are many developments in the field of EUV lithography that are helping to move it towards increased high volume manufacturing (HVM) feasibility. Targeted improvements in hardware design for advanced lithography are of key interest to our group, specifically metrics such as line width roughness (LWR) smoothing, dose reduction processes, and defect mitigation. In this study, we investigate how novel hardware solutions currently available on our SCREEN DT-3000 coat-develop track system, can be used as complementary non-patterning approaches to boost resist scaling even further. The utility of SCREEN non-standard hardware features to enhance overall lithography performance of a main chain scission EUV resist was deeply explored, and new process approaches were successfully identified. We hereby present our work utilizing the SCREEN DT- 3000 coat-develop track system with an ASML NXE:3400 to improve sensitivity, CD uniformity, line width roughness, and defectivity levels of aggressive dense L/S patterns.