Effective resist profile control

To meet Moore’s law, resist resolution improvement has become more and more important. However, it is difficult to improve resist resolution and keep vertical sidewall profile. For example, a high contrast hole resist may cause trench scum, due to very T-top profile. This paper reports several concepts for resist profile tuning without losing performance for lithographic factor , including mask error enhancement factor (MEEF), depth of focus (DOF), and critical dimension uniformity (CDU). To quantitative analysis the resist profile improvement, we define a new factor, Scum fail ratio (F/R%) for new techniques evaluation. The new techniques, including floatable additive, floatable PAG, and new monomer, are discussed. From X-SEM and CD-SEM data, former three concepts could improve resist sidewall profile quantitatively evaluated by Scum fail F/R% and keep lithographic factors. In addition, another key factor, resist residue defect, is also discussed. The high contrast resist with higher receding contact angle (RCA) easily generates more residue defect after development. With the new monomer composition, RCA of Resist E is decreased from 54 to 48 degree after development. Therefore, the residue defect is improved one order.