Modeling of EUV photoresists with a resist point spread function

Abstract

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is under development for possible deployment at the 32-nm technology node. One active area of research in this field is the development of photoresists that can meet the stringent requirements (high resolution, high sensitivity, low LER, etc.) of lithography in this regime. In order to facilitate research in this and other areas related to EUV lithography, a printing station based upon the 0.3-NA Micro Exposure Tool (MET) optic was established at the Advanced Light Source, a synchrotron facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. A resist modeling technique using a resist point spread function has been shown to have good agreement with experiments for certain EUV resists such as Shipley EUV-2D [2]. The resist point spread function is a two-dimensional function that, when convolved with the simulated aerial image for a given mask pattern and applied to a threshold function, gives a representation of the photoresist pattern remaining after development. The simplicity of this modeling approach makes it attractive for rapid modeling of photoresists for process development applications. In this work, the resist point spread functions for three current high-resolution EUV photoresists [Rohm and Haas EUV-2D, Rohm and Haas MET-1K (XP 3454C), and KRS] are extracted experimentally. This model is then used in combination with aerial image simulations (including effects of projection optic aberrations) to predict the resist pattern for a variety of test patterns. A comparison is made between these predictions and experimental results to evaluate the effectiveness of this modeling technique for newer high-resolution EUV resists.