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Roughness improvement of Negative Tone Development (NTD) photoresist by chemical shrink process is discussed in this paper for the extension of 193 nm lithography. Addition to feature size shrinkage, improvement of photoresist roughness is also important subject for advanced node device manufacturing. New shrink materials were evaluated by Scan Probe Microscope (SPM) and a material improved surface roughness by 37%. Moreover, 28% improvement of Contact Edge Roughness (CER) was confirmed.

In this paper, we discuss a new approach to improve the resist roughness, which is applied after the lithography process. The ERC (Edge Roughness Controller) process is composed of two steps, 1) To deliver resist softening material at the resist surface 2) To give thermal flow at that region in the bake step. Several samples were prepared based on this concept and consistent improvement was observed. Finally, by optimizing ERC chemistry using HSP (Hansen Solubility Parameter), LWR improvement of 14.8% could be achieved.