Sensitivity and image quality of resists with electron-beam, ion-beam, and optical exposure

A review of line edge roughness and surface nanotexture resulting from patterning processes

“…It takes into account the molecular structure of the photoresist, the photoacid generator presence, its initiation, diffusion and reaction to create deprotected sites as well as the dissolution of the exposed areas using a quasistatic fast dissolution algorithm [32][33][34]. Excellent process simulation and experimental studies have also appeared in the literature for the process effects on LER, such as aerial image contrast [35][36][37], shot noise [38], development process [39][40][41][42][43], lithographic process conditions [44][45][46][47][48], lithographic materials [32,33,[49][50][51][52][55][56][57][58][59] and others. Our simulation results are consistent with these studies.…”

Monte Carlo study of surface and line-width roughness of resist film surfaces during dissolution

“…Many experimental measurements of surface roughness in resist materials have clarified its dependence on exposure dose, polymer chemical structure [22,23], the degree of constituent mixing [24], the variation of photo-chemical events due to shot noise [25][26][27][28], the quality of the mask and of the latent image [29][30][31][32], the solvent-polymer interactions, the polymer and the solvent molecular weight, and the acid diffusion range [33]. Finally, the polymer material itself in terms of monomer size, chain stiffness, glass transition temperature, affects greatly roughness also through the control of the mobility of the acid species, which seems so far the only mechanism by which both SR and LER could decrease [34,35].…”

“…Some of them are based on cutting the sample and observing the side surface, SEM observation of tilted side [29], and quantification of LER for top-down SEM image analysis [10][11][12][13]29,32].…”

Preparation of a Photoacid Generating Monomer and Its Application in Lithography

“…At present, one of the most promising imaging systems is chemically amplified (CA) resists. [3,4] These resists have been studied intensively due to their high sensitivity, resulting from an acid-catalyzed deprotection pathway. A CA resist usually consists of a polymer matrix and a photoacid generator (PAG).…”