Influence of base and PAG on deprotection blur in EUV photoresists and some thoughts on shot noise

A contact-hole deprotection blur metric has been used to monitor the deprotection blur of an experimental open platform resist (EH27) as the weight percent of base and photo acid generator (PAG) were varied. A 6x increase in base weight percent is shown to reduce the size of successfully patterned 1:1 line-space features from 52 nm to 39 nm without changing deprotection blur. Corresponding isolated line-edge-roughness is reduced from 6.9 nm to 4.1 nm. A 2x increase in PAG weight percent is shown to improve 1:1 line-space patterning from 47 nm to 40 nm without changing deprotection blur or isolated LER. A discussion of improved patterning performance as related to shot noise and deprotection blur concludes with a speculation that the spatial distribution of PAG molecules has been playing some role, perhaps a dominant one, in determining the uniformity of photo generated acids in the resists that have been studied.