Recent progress of CAR materials for EUV lithography (Conference Presentation)

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is considered to be the most effective strategy for realize 7 nm generation manufacturing and beyond. A key factor for the realization of EUV lithography is the choice of EUV resist material that is capable of resolving below 15-nm half pitch with high sensitivity. Chemical Amplified Resist (CAR) using positive-tone development (PTD) is still one of the strongest candidates for EUV lithography. Recently, some researchers have reported concerns on the limitations in the performance of CAR materials. Consequently, there is a critical need for new chemistry and development of new resist materials. However, new resist materials still have lots of concerns for manufacturing, such like a non-CAR materials including metal resist. Therefore, CAR materials are still most important items for EUV lithography manufacturing. We’ve been developing negative-tone imaging (organic solvent development) with EUV exposure (EUV-NTI) for a long time. EUV-NTI has advantages for line-width roughness (LWR) due to their low swelling and dissolving smoothly. New EUV-NTI performances will be shown and also process condition progress will be updated. Also, the basic study will be reported, which is high absorption unit including materials for improving stochastic effect. We report herein recent progress of CAR materials, both positive-tone and negative-tone for EUV lithography.