Innovative technologies are required by integrated circuit manufacturers to create smaller feature sizes on chips. According to the semiconductor roadmap, feature sizes are slated to be as small as 45nm in 2007, and sizes will be continued to decrease in the following years.Suitable absorbance, Lower etch resistance, straight photoresist profiles, wider D.O.F., thinner film thickness, more effective barrier properties to reduce resist poisoning, and sublimate reduction for defect free coating are the major concerns to be taken into consideration for new BARC and gap fill materials.In this paper, the study of sublimate reduction in the new BARC and gap fill materials was investigated. The effect of sublimate reduction from BARC in bake process is related to decrease defect number. We will introduce new BARC and gap fill material consisted of the polymers with self crosslink-reaction system. In addition of sublimate reduction data, resist profiles and 130 nm via fill performance in via-first dual damascene process presented here would show clearly these materials are ready to be investigated into mass production of 90 nm node IC devices and beyond.

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This study focuses on the correlation between simulation and experiment using UV curable gap fill materials for global planarization in advanced lithographic and nanoimprinting techniques. A novel gap fill material has been optimized and developed for global planarization properties. Gap fill materials planarize irregular substrates such as patterned steps, vias, and trenches to increase depth of focus and patterning resolution. After planarizing the substrate surface, the gap fill materials provide dry etching selectivity to the under-layer to avoid damaging the dielectric materials. In the characterization of UV curable gap fill materials, two key factors were identified. The factors were the specific dependence of planarization on the spin speed and film thickness. By optimizing these factors, an appreciable reduction in via topography was realized. An array of 1.1 µm deep, 300 nm diameter holes was planarized to 10 nm thickness bias with a 380 nm thick planarizing film. In addition of global planarization, a final design consideration was to reduce the amount of outgassing during the process. UV curable gap fill material was optimized for sublimate reduction resulting in a defect-free coating. The sublimate produced from the developed gap fill material during baking was significantly decreased when compared with that produced from a thermal curable material. And, the third evaluation of UV curable gap fill materials was reported, to avoid resist poisoning issues in an advanced via-first dual damascene process. The resist poisoning properties in UV curable gap fill material were observed better performance than that of thermal curable material. The resulting UV curable gap fill materials based on this study will be extremely useful for lithographic and nanoimprinting techniques.

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