Title: Simulation of material and processing effects on photoresist line-edge roughness

Authors: G.P. Patsis, M.D. Nijkerk, L.H.A. Leunissen, E. Gogolides

Addresses: Institute of Microelectronics, NCSR 'Demokritos', Aghia Paraskevi Athens 15310, Greece. ' TNO, Stieltjesweg 1, Postbus 155, Delft 2600 AD, The Netherlands. ' IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, Leuven B-3001, Belgium. ' Institute of Microelectronics, NCSR 'Demokritos', Aghia Paraskevi Athens15310, Greece

Abstract: Sub-100 nm device fabrication rules require extremely tight control of Line-Edge Roughness (LER) of patterned structures. During lithographic processes the resist film introduces an initial LER due to its chemical structure and processing. This initial LER evolves during the subsequent etching step. A stochastic simulator is presented which takes into account material and process effects on photoresist LER. Its application in model cases reveals that LER decreases with lower degree of polymerisation, but is sensitive on the acid diffusion process during post exposure bake in Chemically Amplified Resists (CARs). Further simulations confirm that LER can be reduced during etch patterning, at the expense of critical dimension control.

Keywords: resist film; line-edge roughness; photoresist LER; acid diffusion; photoacid-generator loading; dissolution; polymer chain architecture; Monte-Carlo simulation; etching; power spectrum; nanoscale technology; nanotechnology; patterned structures; chemically amplified resists; etch patterning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCSE.2006.012765

International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering, 2006 Vol.2 No.3/4, pp.134 - 143

Published online: 14 Mar 2007 *

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