Effect of background exposure dose upon line-edge roughness (LER)

Abstract

LER is found to correlate strongest with the background, or flare, portion of the lithographic aerial image contrast, when compared with the image slope and "standard" (max -min)/(max + min) contrast. A large pool of collected data and rigorous statistical analysis of variance conclude with far greater than 99% confidence that as any of these measures of aerial image profile degrade, LER increases. However, the relation between background exposure and LER is by far the most significant.