High-resolution sidewall observation and LER measurement of a photoresist pattern by a metrological tilting-AFM

Abstract

Sidewall roughness of a photoresist pattern is important information to consider such as a relation between LERs (or LWRs) of the resist and etched pattern. It is well known that sidewall of a dry-etched Si pattern shows vertical striations (anisotropic roughness) [Kizu et al., JM3 19, 014003 (2020)]. On the other hand, in the case of photoresist, although there are several studies about photoresist sidewall roughness, neither high-resolution sidewall measurement nor roughness evaluation techniques has been established. In this study, we measured photoresist sidewall with high-resolution using a metrological tilting-AFM, which is able to measure vertical sidewall of a line pattern owing to tilted AFM-probe. The result showed the photoresist sidewall roughness has height dependency in contrast to that of a Si line pattern. Further result and discussion will be presented in the conference.