Mr. Andrew Liang Profile

Andrew Liang

at Lam Research Corp

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Author

Publications (3)

Proceedings Article | 22 March 2018 Paper

Evolution of roughness during the pattern transfer of high-chi, 10nm half-pitch, silicon-containing block copolymer structures

Gregory Blachut, Stephen Sirard, Andrew Liang, Chris Mack, Michael Maher, Paulina Rincon-Delgadillo, Boon Teik Chan, Geert Mannaert, Geert Vandenberghe, C. Grant Willson, Christopher Ellison, Diane Hymes

Proceedings Volume 10589, 1058907 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2297489

KEYWORDS: Etching, Silicon, Chemistry, Reactive ion etching, Directed self assembly, Semiconducting wafers, Dry etching, Scanning electron microscopy, Line edge roughness

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Proceedings Article | 13 March 2018 Paper

Unbiased roughness measurements: the key to better etch performance

Andrew Liang, Chris Mack, Stephen Sirard, Chen-wei Liang, Liu Yang, Justin Jiang, Nader Shamma, Rich Wise, Jengyi Yu, Diane Hymes

Proceedings Volume 10585, 1058524 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2297328

KEYWORDS: Etching, Line width roughness, Line edge roughness, Silicon, Scanning electron microscopy, Standards development, Metrology, Photoresist processing, Image filtering

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Proceedings Article | 24 March 2017 Presentation + Paper

Integrated approach to improving local CD uniformity in EUV patterning

Andrew Liang, Jan Hermans, Timothy Tran, Katja Viatkina, Chen-Wei Liang, Brandon Ward, Steven Chuang, Jengyi Yu, Greg Harm, Jelle Vandereyken, David Rio, Michael Kubis, Samantha Tan, Mircea Dusa, Akhil Singhal, Bart van Schravendijk, Girish Dixit, Nader Shamma, Rich Wise, Sirish Reddy

Proceedings Volume 10143, 1014319 (2017) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2258192

KEYWORDS: Extreme ultraviolet lithography, Etching, Extreme ultraviolet, Lithography, High volume manufacturing, Stochastic processes, Plasma etching, Reactive ion etching, Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition, Focus stacking software, Photomasks

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Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is crucial to enabling technology scaling in pitch and critical dimension (CD). Currently, one of the key challenges of introducing EUV lithography to high volume manufacturing (HVM) is throughput, which requires high source power and high sensitivity chemically amplified photoresists. Important limiters of high sensitivity chemically amplified resists (CAR) are the effects of photon shot noise and resist blur on the number of photons received and of photoacids generated per feature, especially at the pitches required for 7 nm and 5 nm advanced technology nodes. These stochastic effects are reflected in via structures as hole-to-hole CD variation or local CD uniformity (LCDU). Here, we demonstrate a synergy of film stack deposition, EUV lithography, and plasma etch techniques to improve LCDU, which allows the use of high sensitivity resists required for the introduction of EUV HVM. Thus, to improve LCDU to a level required by 5 nm node and beyond, film stack deposition, EUV lithography, and plasma etch processes were combined and co-optimized to enhance LCDU reduction from synergies.

Test wafers were created by depositing a pattern transfer stack on a substrate representative of a 5 nm node target layer. The pattern transfer stack consisted of an atomically smooth adhesion layer and two hardmasks and was deposited using the Lam VECTOR PECVD product family. These layers were designed to mitigate hole roughness, absorb out-of-band radiation, and provide additional outlets for etch to improve LCDU and control hole CD. These wafers were then exposed through an ASML NXE3350B EUV scanner using a variety of advanced positive tone EUV CAR. They were finally etched to the target substrate using Lam Flex dielectric etch and Kiyo conductor etch systems. Metrology methodologies to assess dimensional metrics as well as chip performance and defectivity were investigated to enable repeatable patterning process development.

Illumination conditions in EUV lithography were optimized to improve normalized image log slope (NILS), which is expected to reduce shot noise related effects. It can be seen that the EUV imaging contrast improvement can further reduce post-develop LCDU from 4.1 nm to 3.9 nm and from 2.8 nm to 2.6 nm. In parallel, etch processes were developed to further reduce LCDU, to control CD, and to transfer these improvements into the final target substrate. We also demonstrate that increasing post-develop CD through dose adjustment can enhance the LCDU reduction from etch. Similar trends were also observed in different pitches down to 40 nm. The solutions demonstrated here are critical to the introduction of EUV lithography in high volume manufacturing. It can be seen that through a synergistic deposition, lithography, and etch optimization, LCDU at a 40 nm pitch can be improved to 1.6 nm (3-sigma) in a target oxide layer and to 1.4 nm (3-sigma) at the photoresist layer.

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