Deep UV Lithography for 0.35μm Design Rules Application to CMOS Technology with Three Metallization Levels

DUV excimer based imaging appears to be one of the best candidate for printing subhalf micron devices. In this paper we have investigated the potentiality of such a technique to process 0.35 μm CMOS devices with 3 levels of metallization. Depending on the level to process, positive or negative tone chemically amplified resists have been used. The processing conditions as well as exposure and focus latitudes for the most critical levels (gate, contact, vias and metall) are reported. From electrical results obtained on the batches processed with these conditions, we can conclude that DUV lithography achieves the requirements of 0.35 μm technologies.