Systematic assessment of the contributors of line edge roughness in EUV lithography using simulations

Edge position variation in EUV patterns is significantly affected by stochastic phenomena that occur during the EUV exposure and the chemical processes in photoresist. Hence, it is important to understand and quantify the contribution of each of the stochastic effects to the edge roughness. In this work, various computational approaches are used based on the rigorous stochastic resist model in order to assess the stochastic contribution of photon absorption and random chemical reactions in EUV photoresist. The simulation results are presented for both the traditional chemically amplified EUV resists and resists utilizing alternative mechanisms of image formation, such as metal based- resists.