Numerical study on photoresist etching processes based on a cellular automata model

Abstract

For the three-dimensional (3-D) numerical study of photoresist etching processes, the 2-D dynamic cellular automata (CA) model has been successfully extended to a 3-D dynamic CA model. Only the boundary cells will be processed in the 3-D dynamic CA model and the structure of “if-else” description in the simulation program is avoided to speed up the simulation. The 3-D dynamic CA model has found to be stable, fast and accurate for the numerical study of photoresist etching processes. The exposure simulation, post-exposure bake (PEB) simulation and etching simulation are integrated together to further investigate the performances of the CA model. Simulation results have been compared with the available experimental results and the simulations show good agreement with the available experiments.