Paper
4 April 2008 Rigorous physical modeling of a materials-based frequency doubling lithography process
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Abstract
Double patterning (DP) lithography appears to be a likely patterning technology for 32 nm node manufacturing. Litho-Litho-Etch DP may offer lower cost-of-ownership than Litho-Etch-Litho-Etch DP methods, but uses novel materials and processes that have not been fully characterized. In this work, one LLE approach (negative resist processed over a positive resist image) is studied; the results are used to develop a rigorous physical model that describes the process behavior. Experimental observations suggest that processing during the second lithographic pass influences the resist features produced by the first pass. A prototype simulator has been developed which can model the behavior of the first resist through the entire double patterning process. The model can also predict the response of the second lithographic pass by accounting for the optical and physical-chemical interactions with the first pass features. After validating the simulation predictions with experimental results, a modeling study investigates the interactions between the two passes as a function of alignment error. The study shows that for materials with similar refractive indices (&Dgr;n ⩽ 0.1, &Dgr;k ≈ 0) optical effects are small and interactions between the passes are dominated by the boundary conditions, even if the materials are inert to each other.
© (2008) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Stewart A. Robertson, John J. Biafore, Trey Graves, and Mark D. Smith "Rigorous physical modeling of a materials-based frequency doubling lithography process", Proc. SPIE 6923, Advances in Resist Materials and Processing Technology XXV, 69230I (4 April 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.772736
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Cited by 8 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Double patterning technology

Image processing

Photoresist processing

Semiconducting wafers

Lithography

Process modeling

Refractive index

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