Process liability evaluation for extreme ultraviolet lithography

Abstract

This work concerns the readiness of extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) for high-volume manufacturing based on accelerated development in critical areas, and the construction of a process liability (PL) test site that integrates results in these areas. Overall lithography performance is determined from the performance of the exposure tool, the printability obtainable with the resist, mask fabrication with accurate critical dimension (CD) control, and correction technology for mask data preparation. The EUV1 exposure tool can carry out exposure over the full field (26 × 33 mm) at a resolution high enough for 32-nm line-and-space patterns when Selete Standard Resist 3 (SSR3) is used. The effect of flare on CD variation is a critical issue in EUVL, so flare is compensated for based on the point spread function for the projection optics of the EUV1 and aerial simulations that take resist blur into account. Production readiness of EUVL based on the integration of results in these areas is evaluated by electrical tests on low-resistance tungsten wiring. We find the PL test site to be very useful for determining where further improvements need to be made and for evaluating the production readiness of EUVL.