Isolated Contact Holes Research Articles

Performance of a high-productivity 300-mm dual-stage 193-nm 0.75-NA TWINSCAN™ AT:1100B system for 100-nm applications

To realize high productivity at the 100-nm node, ASML developed the TWINSCAN™ AT:1100B. This dual-stage 193-nm lithography system combines high throughput TWINSCAN™ technology for 300-mm wafers, excellent dynamical performance, and low-aberration 0.75-NA Starlith™ 1100 projection optics. The system is equipped with a 20-W 4-kHz ArF laser and the AERIAL™ II illuminator, enabling high intensity off-axis and multipole QUASAR™ illumination. Important process control requirements for the 100-nm technology node are CD variation across the chip and across the wafer. Full wafer leveling, including dies on the edge of the wafer, and CD uniformity performance on 300-mm wafers with and without topology are presented, showing full wafer CD uniformity numbers as low as 6.3 nm 3σ for 100-nm isolated lines with assisting features. Imaging performance of dense, fully isolated lines plus dense and isolated contact holes is shown. Also, printing of critical customer structures is discussed. With these results it is demonstrated that the TWINSCAN™ AT:1100B 300-mm ArF Step & Scan system meets the requirements for the 100-nm node.